THE  AIMS  OF 
L.  i  LivAtvi'   STUDY 


CORSON 


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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


THE   AIMS    OF    LITERARY 
STUDY 


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THE  AIMS  OF  LITERARY 
STUDY 


BY 


HIRAM   CORSON,   LL.D. 

Professor  of  English  Literature  in  the  Cornell  Univer- 
sity ;  author  of  '  An  Introductioti  to  the  Study  of 
Robert  Browning's  Poetry^  'An  hitrodttction 
to  the  Study  of  Shakespeare^  '  A  Primer 
of  English  Verse,  chiefly  in  its  Esthetic 
and  Organic  Character,'  etc. 


l^cbj  iork 
THE   MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

London:  Macmillan  &  Co..  Ltd. 
I901 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1894, 
By  MACMILLAN  AND  CO. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped  December,  1894.    Reprinted 
April,  August,  December,  1895;  July,  1898  ;  July,  1899 
July,  1901. 


yorbjooti  iSrrss  : 

J.  S.  Gushing  &  Co.  -  Berwick  &  Smith. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


MIN, 


PREFATORY  NOTE. 

The  main  portion  of  the  matter  con- 
tained in  this  little  book,  was  contributed 
to  Poet-Lore,  to  the  editors  of  which  my 
thanks  ai'e  dice  for  kind  permission  to 
reprint  it  here.  In  the  opening  section 
I  have  repeated  much  of  an  Address  to 
a  graduating  class  of  the  Ogontz  School, 
entitled  '■  WJiat  Does^  what  Knows, 
what  Is.' 

H.    C. 


^61582 


The  letter  killeth,  but  the  spirit  giveth  life. 

—  Si.  Paul. 

Truth  is  within  ourselves;    it  takes  no  rise 
From   outward   things,  whate'er  you  may  be- 
lieve : 
There  is  an  inmost  centre  in  us  all, 
Where  truth  abides  in  fulness;  and  around, 
Wall  upon  wall,  the  gross  flesh  hems  it  in, 
This  perfect,  clear  perception  —  which  is  truth ; 
A  baffling  and  perverting  carnal  mesh 
Blinds  it,  and  makes  all  error  :  and  *  /<?  know  ' 
Rather  consists  in  opening  out  a  way 
Whence  the  imprisoned  splendor  may  escape, 
Than  in  effecting  entry  for  a  light 
Supposed  to  be  without. 

—  Bro7uning's  'Paracelsus.' 

W^e  teach  and  teach 
Until,  like  drumming  pedagogues,  we  lose 
The  thought  that  zuhat  we  teach  has  higher 

ends 
Than  being  taught  and  learned. 

—  A  ugusta  Webster. 

6 


THE  AIMS  OF  LITERARY 
STUDY. 

nrO  the  aged  John  of  Patmos,  in 
Robert  Browning's  '  A  Death  in 
the  Desert,'  is  attributed  the  doctrine 
of  the  trinal  unity  of  man,  '  How 
divers  persons '  (the  word  being  used 
in  the  sense  of  parts  played), 

How  divers  persons  witness  in  each  man 
Three  souls,  which  make  up  one  soul :   first, 

to  wit, 
A  soul  of  each  and  all  the  bodily  parts, 
Seated   therein,    which    works,    and    is   what 

Does, 
And  has  the  use  of  earth,  and  ends  the  man 
Downward;  but,  tending  upward  for  advice, 
Grows  into,  and  again  is  grown  into 

7 


8  THE    AIMS    OF 

By  the  next  soul,  which,  seated  in  the  brain, 
Useth  the  first  "with  its  collected  use, 
And  feeleth,  thinketh,  willeth,  —  is  what  Knows: 
Which,  duly  tending  upward  in  its  turn. 
Grows  into,  and  again  is  grown  into 
By  the  last  soul,  that  useth  both  the  first, 
Subsisting  whether  they  assist  or  no, 
And,  constituting  man's  self,  is  what  Is  — 
And  leans  upon  the  former,  makes  it  play, 
As  that  olayed  off  the  first :  and,  tending  up. 
Holds,  is  upheld  by,  God,  and  ends  the  man 
Upward  in  that  dread  point  of  intercourse, 
Nor  needs  a  place,  for  it  returns  to  Him. 
What  Does,  what  Knows,  what  Is;  three  souls, 
one  man. 

In  Mrs.   Browning's  '  Aurora  Leigh,' 
Aurora  says  to  Romney  : 

life,  you've  granted  me, 
Develops  from  within.     But  innermost 
Of  the  inmost,  most  interior  of  the  interne, 
God  claims  his  own.  Divine  humanity 
Reneiving  nature,  .  .  . 


LITERARY    STUDY.  9 

There  must  be  but  an  infinitesimally 
small  part  of  our  absolute  being  which 
comes  to  consciousness  in  this  life, 
however  much  we  may  be  educated, 
in  the  common  acceptation  of  that 
word,  and  however  extended  our  out- 
ward and  our  inward  experiences  may 
be.  Back  of  our  conscious  and  active 
powers,  is  a  vast  and  mysterious  domain 
of  unconsciousness  —  but  a  domain 
which  is,  nevertheless,  our  true  being, 
and  which  is  unceasingly  influencing 
our  conscious  and  active  powers,  and, 
as  it  is  rectified  or  unrectified,  more 
or  less  determining  us  to  act  accord- 
ing to  absolute  standards,  or  according 
to  relative,  conventional,  and  expedient 
standards. 

The    rectification    or   adjustment    of 


lO  THE    AIMS    OF 

that  which  constitutes  our  true  being, 
should  therefore  transcend  all  other 
aims  of  education,  however  important 
these  may  be.  In  comparison  with 
this  rectification  or  adjustment,  the 
stores  of  knowledge  which  the  acquisi- 
tive faculty  may  heap  up,  and  the 
sharpening  of  the  intellect,  sink  into 
comparative  insignificance. 

The  condition  under  which  our  souls 
silently  shape  themselves  to  whatever 
is,  spiritually  speaking,  most  shapely, 
outside  of  ourselves,  is,  that  we  attain 
to  what  Wordsworth  calls  '  a  wise  pas- 
siveness.'  It  is  a  thing  to  be  attained 
to,  and  a  very  difficult  thing  to  be 
attained  to,  especially  in  these  days 
of  stress  and  strain  in  temporal  mat- 
ters.   A  luise  passiveness.     The  epithet 


LITERARY   STUDY.  II 

'  wise  '  means  wise  in  heart ;  and  a 
wise  passiveness  I  understand  to  be 
quite  synonymous  with  the  Christian 
idea  of  humihty — that  is,  not  a  self- 
depreciation,  but,  rather,  a  spontaneous 
and  even  unconscious  fealty,  an  un- 
swerving loyalty,  to  what  is  spiritually 
above  us.  That  is  humility.  In  the 
poem  in  which  the  phrase  occurs 
('Expostulation  and  Reply'),  the 
poet  says  : 

The  eye  —  it  cannot  choose  but  see; 

We  cannot  bid  the  ear  be  still; 
Our  bodies  feel,  where'er  they  be, 

Against,  or  with  our  will. 

Nor  less  I  deem  that  there  are  Powers 
Which  of  themselves  our  minds  impress; 

That  we  can  feed  this  mind  of  ours 
In  a  wise  passiveness. 


12  THE    AIMS    OF 

Think  you,  'mid  all  this  mighty  sum 
Of  things  forever  speaking, 

That  nothing  of  itself  will  come, 
But  we  must  still  be  seeking? 

'The  eye,  it  cannot  choose  but  see ; ' 
but  it  sees  according  to  what  we  are ; 
it  is  in  the  service  of  our  essential 
selves.  'We  cannot  bid  the  ear  be 
still;  '  but  it  hears  according  to  what 
we  are;  it  is  in  the  service  of  our 
essential  selves;  and  according  as  our 
essential  selves  are  shapely  or  un- 
shapely, the  eye  and  the  ear  report 
of  the  shapely  or  the  unshapely. 

Blessed  be  William  Wordsworth 
among  teachers,  and  rectifiers  of  the 
human  spirit. 

The  rectification  or  adjustment  of 
the   'what  Is,'    I   repeat,  should  tran- 


LITERARY    STUDY.  1 3 

scend  all  other  aims  of  education, 
however  important  these  may  be. 
The  acquisition  of  knowledge  is  a 
good  thing ;  the  emendation  and 
sharpening  of  the  intellect  is  a  good 
thing;  the  cultivation  of  science  and 
philosophy  is  a  good  thing;  but  there 
is  something  of  infinitely  more  impor- 
tance than  all  these  —  it  is,  the  recti- 
fication, the  adjustment,  through  that 
mysterious  operation  we  call  sympathy, 
of  the  unconscious  personality,  the 
hidden  soul,  which  cooperates  with 
the  active  powers,  wdth  the  conscious 
intellect,  and,  as  this  unconscious 
personality  is  rectified  or  unrectified, 
determines  the  active  powers,  the  con- 
scious intellect,  for  righteousness  or 
unrighteousness. 


14  THE    AIMS    OF 

And  this  fact  needs  to  be  enforced, 
and  will  need  to  be  enforced,  for  a 
long  time  yet  to  come,  judging  from 
the  present  state  of  the  educational 
world,  namely,  that  it  is  only  through 
the  Svhat  Is '  that  the  'what  Does ' 
and  the  Svhat  Knows,'  can  be  recti- 
fied or  adjusted.  Attempts  at  a  direct 
rectification  or  adjustment  of  these, 
must  be  more  or  less  failures.  No 
Traciatus  de  emendatione  intellecius  will 
avail  much  which  ignores  the  deter- 
mining power  back  of  the  intellect. 

That  all  spirit  is  mutually  attrac- 
tive, as  all  matter  is  mutually  attrac- 
tive, is  an  ultimate  fact  beyond  which 
we  cannot  go,  and  which  we  must 
accept  as  a  fact.  And  it  is  on  this 
fact,  that  the  rectification  of  the  'what 


LITERARY    STUDY.  1 5 

Is '  must  be  based.  Spirit  to  spirit. 
'As  in  water  face  answereth  to  face, 
so  the  heart  of  man  to  man.'  (Prov- 
erbs xxvii,  19.)  And  here  we  are 
at  the  very  basal  fact  of  Christianity 
—  a  religion  which  is  only  incident- 
ally a  doctrine  —  only  incidentally 
addressed  to  the  Svhat  Knows;  '  it  is, 
first  of  all,  a  religion  whose  impreg- 
nable fortress  is  a  divine  personality 
in  whom  all  that  is  spiritually  poten- 
tial in  man  was  realized.  Whatever 
attacks  may  be  made  upon  the  origi- 
nal records  of  Christianity,  upon  the 
august  fabric  of  the  Church,  with  its 
creeds  and  dogmas,  and  formularies, 
and  paraphernalia,  this  fortress  will 
stand  forever,  and  mankind  will  for- 
ever seek  and  find  refuge  in  it. 


1 6  THE    AIMS    OF 

The  Church,  through  the  centuries, 
has  been  kept  alive,  not  by  the  letter 
of  the  New  Testament,  for  the  letter 
killeth,  but  by  a  succession  of  sancti- 
fied spirits,  'the  noble  Living  and  the 
noble  Dead,'  through  whom  the  Christ 
spirit  has  been  transmitted,  whose 
'echoes  roll  from  soul  to  soul,  and 
grow  forever  and  forever.' 

When  Christ  said  'Follow  me,'  he 
addressed  the  'what  Is '  in  human 
nature.  Follow  me, —  not  from  an 
intellectual  apprehension  of  principles 
involved  in  my  life,  but  through  deep 
sympathy,  through  the  awakening, 
vitalizing,  actuating  power  of  incar- 
nate Truth;  through  a  response  of 
your  spiritual  nature  to  mine;  and  in, 
and    by,  and   through,   th?t  response, 


LITERARY    STUDY.  I  7 

your  essential  life  will  be  brought  into 
harmony  with,  and  carried  along  by, 
the  spiritual  forces  of  the  world,  and 
thus  conducted  by  them  to  the  king- 
dom of  eternal  truth  within  yourselves. 
To  sharpen  the  intellect,  the  'what 
Knows,'  without  rectifying  the  'what 
Is,'  is  a  dangerous  thing  —  dangerous 
to  the  individual  —  dangerous  to  soci- 
ety. The  results  of  it  we  see  every 
day,  and  read  of  in  the  newspapers, 
in  the  actions  of  smart  men  of  our 
country  —  men  who  can  falsify  bank 
accounts,  and  appropriate  large  sums 
of  other  people's  money  to  their  own 
use;  who  use  high  political  positions 
for  purely  selfish  ends,  and  serve  the 
prince  of  darkness  in  various  ways. 
These   men   have   had  a  good  educa- 


l8  IHE   AIMS    OF 

tion,  as  it  is  called;  some  of  them, 
it  may  be,  are  graduates  of  colleges, 
who  have  carried  off  the  most  coveted 
prizes.  They  have  been,  perhaps, 
instructed  in  the  intellectual  evidences 
of  Christianity,  which  are  no  evi- 
dences at  all;  but  we  find  that  all  this 
avails  not  for  righteousness. 

In  the  following  pages  I  shall  speak 
particularly  of  poetry,  as  a  means  of 
educating  the  'what  Is '  —  poetry, 
which  Wordsworth  has  defined  as  'the 
breath  and  finer  spirit  of  all  know- 
ledge, the  impassioned  expression 
which  is  in  the  countenance  of  all 
science.'  In  poetical  study,  the  basal 
principle  of  spirit  to  spirit  must  be 
all-controlling;  to  it,  all  other  features 
of  the  study  must  be  subordinated. 


LITERARY    STUDY.  1 9 

We  can  know  a  true  poem  only  so 
far  as  we  can  reproduce  it  sympa- 
thetically within  ourselves  —  in  other 
words,  we  know  it  to  the  extent  to 
which  our  own  spirits  respond  to  the 
spiritual  appeal  which  it  makes  to  us. 

The  spiritual  appeals  which  are 
made  by  every  form  of  art,  be  it  in 
color,  in  sound,  in  stone,  in  poetry, 
or  whatever  may  be  the  medium 
employed,  must  be  responded  to 
directly,  immediately  (in  the  literal 
sense  of  the  word),  or  not  at  all. 
Of  course,  the  extent  of  the  response 
may  be  indefinitely  increased.  But 
there  must  be,  to  begin  with,  a  direct, 
immediate  response,  however  limited 
it  may  be.  There's  no  roundabout 
way  to  such  appeals.     The  inductive 


20  THE   AIMS    OF 

method  is  not  applicable  to  spiritual 
matters.  The  very  word,  induction, 
is  absurd,  in  connection  with  the 
spiritual.  It  belongs  exclusively  to 
the  intellectual  domain. 

If  we  apply  the  insulated  intellect 
to  a  poem,  as  is  done  in  the  methods 
called  'thorough,'  in  which  attention 
is  given  to  all  things  (and  some  others) 
except  the  one  thing  needful,  the 
result  being  'as  if  one  should  be 
ignorant  of  nothing  concerning  the 
scent  of  violets,  except  the  scent 
itself,'  —  if  we  apply  the  insulated 
intellect  to  a  poem,  I  say,  we  get 
only  the  definite  thought  which  articu- 
lates it.  The  indefinite  spiritual  ele- 
ment which  every  true  poem  must 
have,   and  which  constitutes    its   real 


LITERARY    STUDY.  2  1 

life,  as  a  poem,  we  can  know  only 
when  our  own  spirits  respond  to  it, 
and  then  we  may  be  said  to  know  it 
more  vitally  than  we  know  the  defi- 
nite, intellectual  element  of  it;  for  it 
is  a  matter  of  inward  consciousness, 
and  there  is  nothing  more  vital  and 
positive  than  that.  The  Svhat  Is ' 
has  been  reached  and  called  forth,  to 
some  extent. 

I'he  meaning  of  the  word  'know' 
needs  to  be  extended.  It  is  too 
much  confined  to  the  conclusions  of 
the  discursive  understanding.  I  have 
often  heard  it  said,  once  heard  a 
prominent  divine  say,  that  we  cannot 
know  spirit.  Why,  really,  there  is 
nothing  we  can  know  better.  Spirit- 
ual consciousness  is  certainlv  a  more 


2  2  THE   AIMS    OF 

vital  kind  of  knowledge  than  any  we 
can  have  of  material  things. 

In  +hese  days  of  the  almost  un- 
limited monarchy  of  the  Svhat  Knows,' 
in  our  schools,  the  greatest  and  most 
difficult  problem  to  be  solved  (and  I 
fear  that  professional  educators  are 
most  in  the  way  of  its  solution),  is, 
how  to  secure  a  better  balancing  than 
now  generally  exists  of  the  intellectual 
and  the  spiritual  man.  And  when 
this  problem  shall  have  been  success- 
fully solved,  and  the  results  of  its 
solution  shall  have  become  general 
(and  it  is  within  the  possibilities  of 
the  future  that  they  may),  there  will 
then  be  a  civilization  more  linked 
with  the  eternal,  because  proceed- 
ing more  from  the  'what  Is'  of  the 


LITERARY    STUDY.  23 

human  kingdom,  and  therefore  a 
more  Christian  civilization  than  that 
in  which  we  are  living  —  a  civiliza- 
tion such  as  the  world  has  never  yet 
known. 


24  THE   ALMS   OF 


!  ITERATURE,  more  especially  po- 
etic and  dramatic  literature,  is 
the  expression  in  letters  of  the 
spiritual,  cooperating  with  the  intel- 
lectual, man,  the  former  being  the 
primary,  dominant  coefficient.  This 
definition,  it  is  presumed,  will  be 
accepted  by  every  cultivated  person 
who  has  experienced,  to  any  extent, 
that  is,  responded  to,  and  assimilated, 
the  informing  life  of  any  great  liter- 
ary product,  poetic  or  dramatic.  (In 
the  spiritual  is  meant  to  be  included 
the  whole  domain  of  the  emotional,  the 
susceptible  or  impressible,  the  sympa- 
thetic,   the    intuitive;    in    short,    the 


LIIERARY    STUDY.  25 

absolute  in  man,  the  Svhat  Is,'  —  that, 
by  and  through  which  man  holds  rela- 
tionship with  the  essential  spirit  of 
things,  as  opposed  to  the  phenomenal 
of  which  the  senses  are  cognizant,  and 
which  the  intellect  then  sets  in  order 
—  classifies  under  systematic  forms.) 
The  inference  is,  therefore,  easy, 
as  to  what  should  be  the  leading  aim 
of  literary  study — ^  that  literature  is 
not  a  mere  knowledge  subject,  as  the 
word  knowledge  is  usually  understood, 
namely,  that  with  which  the  discurs- 
ive, formulating  intellect  has  to  do. 
But  it  is  a  knowledge  subject  (only 
that  and  nothing  more)  if  that  higher 
form  of  knowledge  be  meant,  which  is 
quite  outside  of  the  domain  of  the 
intellect  —  a    knowledge    which    is    a 


26  THE    AIMS    OF 

matter  of  spiritual  consciousness  and 
which  the  intellect  cannot  translate 
into  a  judgment.  It  is,  nevertheless, 
at  the  same  time,  the  most  distinct 
and  vital  kind  of  knowledge. 

But  in  the  prevailing  methods  of 
literary  study,  it  can  hardly  be  dis- 
puted, the  intellectual  or  secondary 
factor  has  precedence  —  is,  indeed, 
almost  exclusively  taken  into  account; 
and  the  consequence  is,  that  students 
are  shut  off  from  the  higher  and  more 
educating  factor.  And  there  is  even 
a  worse  state  of  things  than  this,  in 
many  schools:  the  intellectual  factor 
(which  may  be  said  to  articulate  the 
spiritual)  is  itself  largely  excluded 
by  technical  study,  or  by  a  study  of 
details  which  rests  within  itself. 


LITERARY    STUDY.  27 

When  a  teacher  has  himself  assimi- 
lated the  informing  spiritual  life  of  a 
work  of  genius,  he  is  not  likely  to  be 
disposed  to  taper  his  instruction  into 
the  merely  technical,  still  less  to  keep 
the  minds  of  his  students  occupied 
with  details,  and  these,  too,  con- 
sidered apart  from  the  general  vitality 
to  which  they  may  contribute.  But 
very  many  of  those  who  conduct  liter- 
ary studies  in  the  schools,  have  not 
themselves  assimilated  the  informing 
spiritual  life  of  the  works  studied; 
and  they  are,  in  consequence,  liable 
to  become,  by  reason  of  the  kind  of 
study  to  which  their  unfitness  obliges 
them  to  resort,  mere  Gradgrinds  who, 
like  their  prototype,  Thomas,  the  iron- 
monger, in  Dickens's  novel  of  'Hard 


28  THE   AIMS    OF 

Times,'  are  disposed  even  to  dis- 
parage the  subtler  metal  of  the  spirit, 
with  all  its  quickening  power.  With 
literature  as  a  power  they  have  noth- 
ing to  do;  its  value  with  them  con- 
sists in  its  furnishing  material  for 
various  kinds  of  drill  which  deal 
with  things  quite  apart  from  whatever 
constitutes  the  power  of  any  work  of 
genius. 

In  the  study  of  a  great  literary 
product,  details  must  come  last — must 
come  after  there  has  been  an  adequate 
response  to  the  informing  life  of  the 
work.  Then,  when  details  are  con- 
sidered, the  student  is,  to  some  extent, 
prepared  to  feel  what  they  contribute 
to  the  general  vitality.  (I,  of  course, 
suppose  a  work  which  has  an  organic 


LITER.4RY    STUDY.  29 

unity,  with  no  superfluous,  unorgan- 
ized elements.  It  would  not  otherwise 
be  a  great  literary  product.)  To  be- 
gin with  details,  as  is  often  (in  the 
schools,  generally)  done,  requires  that 
they  be  studied  per  se,  and  such  study 
must  be  utterly  'vain  and  impotent,' 
so  far  as  their  relationship  to  the 
whole  structure  is  concerned.  Details 
are  lifeless  considered  apart  from  'the 
atmosphere  that  moulds,  and  the 
dynamic  forces  that  combine.' 

Another  feature  of  the  literary  work 
of  schools  which  is  often  made  too 
much  of,  is  the  study  of  Histories  of 
English  Literature  and  of  the  relations 
of  literary  masterpieces  to  the  periods 
in  which  they  were  produced.  All 
works  of  genius  render  the  best  ser- 


30  THE    AIMS    OF 

vice,  in  literary  education,  when  they 
are  first  assimilated  in  their  absolute 
character.  It  is,  of  course,  important 
to  know  their  relations  to  the  several 
times  and  places  in  which  they  were 
produced;  but  such  knowledge  is  not 
for  the  tyro  in  literary  study.  He 
must  first  know  literature,  if  he  is 
constituted  so  to  know  it,  in  its  abso- 
lute character.  He  can  go  into  the 
'philosophy  '  of  its  relationships  later, 
if  he  like,  when  he  has  a  true  literary 
education,  and  when  the  'years  that 
bring  the  philosophic  mind '  have 
been  reached.  Every  great  produc- 
tion of  genius  is,  in  fact,  in  its  essen- 
tial character,  no  more  related  to  one 
age  than  to  another.  It  is  only  in  its 
phenomenal    character    (its    outward 


LITERARY    STUDY.  3  I 

manifestations),   that   it  has  a  special 
relationship.      (See  Note  i.) 

Such  a  little  book,  of  two  or  three 
days'  reading,  as  Stopford  Brooke's 
'Primer  of  English  Literature'  the 
student  might  read  through  a  number 
of  times,  in  order  that  the  literature 
be  mapped  out  in  his  mind,  and 
authors  be  located  as  to  time  (See 
Note  2) ;  but  Histories  of  Literature 
cannot  do  much  for  literary  education, 
which  must  come  first,  and  which,  in 
its  true  sense,  is  a  spiritual  education, 
and  this,  no  amount  of  mere  literary 
knowledge  or  literary  history,  will,  of 
itself,  induce.  It  must  be  induced 
on  the  basis  of  what  is  permanent  and 
eternal  —  of  what  is  independent  of 
time  and  place. 


32  THE   AIMS    OF 

Most  undergraduates  in  our  colleges 
and  universities  are  not  prepared  for 
any  historical  treatment  of  the  litera- 
ture. As  a  preparation  for  this,  they 
should  first  know,  in  the  true  sense  of 
'  know '  which  I  have  indicated,  the 
leading  productions  along  the  whole 
line  of  the  literature  from  Chaucer  to 
the  present  time,  and  have  a  feeling 
of  its  historical  current. 

Those  features  of  a  work  of  genius 
which  reveal  the  special  influences  of 
time  and  place  (and  they  are,  of 
course,  common  to  all  works  of  gen- 
ius) are,  more  or  less,  adventitious, 
do  not  constitute  a  part  of  its  essen- 
tial, informing  vitality.  That  must 
come  from  the  absolute  personality  of 
the  author;   it  is  that  which  maintains 


LITERARY    STUDY.  ^^ 

a  hold  upon  the  interests  of  mankind, 
and  it  is  that  which  it  should  be  the 
leading  object  of  literary  study  to 
assimilate.  "Tis  life,  for  which  we 
pant;  more  life,  and  fuller,  that  we 
want,'  or  ought  to  want,  if  we  don't. 
*I  came,'  said  the  divine  life-giver, 
'that  men  might  have  life,  and  have  it 
abundantly.'  He  meant,  of  course, 
the  absolute  life  of  the  spirit;  and 
it  is  this  absolute  life  which  great 
productions  of  genius  may,  in  their 
degree,  give,  or  rather  awaken  in  the 
soul,  if  the  right  attitude  toward  them 
be  taken. 

Mrs.  Browning,  in  her  *  Aurora 
Leigh,'  speaks  of  great  poets  as  'the 
only  truth-tellers,  now  left  to  God, — 
the    only   speakers   of    essential  truth, 


34  THE   AIMS   OF 

opposed  to  relative,  comparative,  and 
temporal  truths;  the  only  holders  by 
His  sun-skirts,  through  conventional 
grey  glooms;  the  only  teachers  who 
instruct  mankind,  from  just  a  shadow 
on  a  charnel-wall,  to  find  man's  verit- 
able stature  out,  erect,  sublime, —  the 
measure  of  a  man,  and  that's  the 
measure  of  an  angel,  says  the  apostle.' 
One  may  know  all  the  relations  of  a 
work  of  genius  (such,  for  exi^mple, 
as  Dante's  'Divina  Commedia ')  to 
time  and  place,  may  have  traced  out 
all  the  contemporary  influences  which 
were  exerted  upon  its  author,  and  yet 
he  may  not  know,  in  any  true  sense, 
the  work  itself.  He  may  have  the 
mere  scholar's  knowledge  of  it.  Pro- 
fessor Brandl,  in  his  valuable  Life  of 


LITERARY    STUDY.  35 

Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge,  traces  the 
influences  of  other  works  which  the 
poet  was  under  in  the  composition  of 
'The  Ancient  Mariner'  and  'Christa- 
bel.'  These  influences  it  is  interest- 
ing enough  to  have  so  traced ;  but  to 
know  these  two  poems  (each  unique 
of  its  kind,  in  English  poetry)  as 
manifestations  of  the  poet's  absolute 
genius,  to  assimilate  that  in  them 
which  insures  them  a  permanency  of 
vitality,   is  quite  a  different  thing. 

What  is  miscalled  the  Philosophy  of 
Literature  (true  philosophy  must  be 
based  on  the  absolute)  and  regarded 
as  of  great,  of  prime  importance, 
indeed,  in  literary  study,  in  some  of 
our  institutions  of  learning,  especially 
those  which  have  been  most  German- 


36  THE    AIMS    OF 

ized,  namely,  the  relations  of  works 
of  genius  to  their  several  times  and 
places,  should  rather  be  called  the 
Physiology  of  Literature.  The  mode 
in  which  genius  manifests  itself,  at 
certain  times,  in  certain  places,  and 
under  certain  circumstances,  may  be 
explained  to  some  extent;  but  the 
genius  itself  cannot  be  explained. 
Environments  stimulate  or  suppress, 
they  do  not,  and  cannot,  make  genius 
—  that  exceptional  spiritual  constitu- 
tion of  a  man  which  brings  him  into 
a  more  intimate  relationship  with  the 
essential  world  than  men  in  general 
are  brought.  The  genius  of  Shake- 
speare cannot  be  explained  by  the 
circumstances  of  the  age  of  Elizabeth. 
That    age    was    the    most    favorable, 


LITERARY    STUDY.  37 

perhaps,  in  the  history  of  the  world, 
for  the  exercise  of  dramatic  gerfius. 
But  there  had  first  to  be  the  dramatic 
genius  to  be  acted  upon  and  brought 
into  play.  There  were  many  other 
dramatists  of  the  time,  as  favorably 
circumstanced  as  was  Shakespeare; 
more  favorably  circumstanced,  in- 
deed, than  he;  but  they  were  all 
inferior  to  him  in  the  constitution  of 
their  genius,  and  consequently  in  what 
they  produced.  None  of  them  had 
the  deep  sense  of  the  constitution, 
the  eternal  fitness,  of  things  which 
Shakespeare  had  (as  is  clearly  shown 
by  their  productions);  and  that  deep 
sense  was  due  to  the  greater  vitality 
of  his  essential  being  which  he  brought 
with  him,  potentially,  into  the  world, 


38  THE    AIMS    OF 

which  he  possessed  independently  of 
all  the  influences  of  his  time  and 
place  (Jiow  he  possessed  it,  we  cannot 
get  at),  and  which  these  influences 
aftenvards  only  brought  into  play. 

There  was  but  one  Chaucer,  in  the 
14th  century,  and  he  still  ranks  among 
the  greatest  of  English  poets  —  in  his 
own  peculiar  domain  is  superior  to 
them  all. 

The  great  poetic  genius  is  a  vara 
avis  in  tej-ris,  who  can  be  fostered, 
but  not  made,  by  his  age.  His  age 
determines  more  or  less  the  7?iode  in 
which  he  manifests  his  power;  but 
the  essential  life  of  what  he  produces 
must  come  from  his  own  absolute 
being. 

Genius    is   genius.     And    it   makes 


LITERARY    STUDY.  39 

its  appearance  in  uncivilized  as  well 
as  in  civilized  life.  It  is  in  the 
human  constitution,  all  the  elements 
of  which  will  assert  themselves  in 
individuals,  some  time  or  other,  how- 
ever much  these  elements  may  be 
generally  suppressed.  The  human 
spirit  is  a  complexly  organized,  indi- 
vidualized divine  force,  which  in  most 
men  is  'cabined,  cribbed,  confined,' 
and,  in  consequence,  more  or  less 
quiescent;  only  in  a  very  few  does  it 
attain  to  an  abnormal  quickening  — 
such  a  quickening  as  leads  to  a  more 
or  less  direct  perception  of  truth,  which 
is  a  characteristic  of  genius.  But 
there  have  always  been  men,  in  all 
times  and  places,  and  in  all  condi- 
tions of  life,  whose  spiritual  sensitive- 


40  THE   AIMS    OF 

ness  has  been  exceptional  —  men  who 
have  served  as  beacons  to  their  fel- 
lows. It  is  the  spiritual  sensitiveness 
of  the  few  which  has  moved  the  mass 
of  mankind  forward  —  the  few,  en- 
dowed with  'the  vision  and  the  faculty 
divine.'  'Where  there  is  no  vision, 
the  people  perish '  (Proverbs,  xxix, 
1 8).  The  intellect  plays  a  secondary 
part.  Its  place  is  behind  the  instinc- 
tive antennae  which  conduct  along 
their  trembling  lines,  fresh  stuff  for  the 
intellect  to  stamp  and  keep  —  fresh 
instinct  for  it  to  translate  into  law. 

The  exceptional  spiritual  sensitive- 
ness which  characterizes  men  of  gen- 
ius, makes  them  more  susceptible  and 
responsive  to  the  permanent,  the 
eternal,    than    are    other    men.      We 


LITERARY    STUDY.  4 1 

cannot  make  a  genius  by  education,  but 
education  should  be  conducted  genius- 
waj'd ;  the  'what  Is '  should,  at  least, 
receive  as  much  consideration  as  the 
'what  Knows'  or  the  'what  Does.' 
This  is  the  condition,  the  indispens- 
able condition,  under  which  a  limited 
response  is  secured  to  the  creations  of 
genius.  It  cannot  be  secured  by  an 
exclusive  exercise  of  the  'what  Knows,' 
in  its  analytic  mode  of  activity.  And 
I  would  add,  that  a  sympathetic  and, 
therefore,  a  synthetic  response  must, 
in  some  measure,  be  given  to  a  crea- 
tion of  genius,  before  the  analytical 
faculty  has  or  can  have  anything  to 
do.  And  unless  conscious  analysis 
finally  bloom  into  unconscious  syn- 
thesis, it  fails  of  its  end. 


42  THE    AIMS    OF 

A  large  class  of  people,  in  these 
days  (I  speak  from  my  own  pretty 
long  experience),  are  pleased  to  have 
a  great  concrete  creation  translated 
into  the  barren  abstract  —  a  creation 
which  might  do  something  for  their 
souls,  if  they  would  take  the  right 
attitude  toward  it,  if  they  would  be 
obedient  to  its  Mcravoare.  The  lan- 
guage of  the  intellect  has  become 
their  vernacular ;  and  accordingly  they 
must  have  the  concrete,  which  is  the 
vernacular  of  genius,  translated  into 
their  vernacular,  the  abstract,  before 
it  mean  anything  to  them. 

What  is  understood  by  scholarship, 
in  these  days,  may  be,  often  is,  a 
great  obstacle  to  the  truest  and  highest 
literary  culture.     German  literary  and 


LITERARY    SITJDY.  43 

philological  scholarship  has  certainly 
been  a  very  great  obstacle. 

Let  us  have  the  most  thorough  and 
the  most  exact  scholarship  possible; 
but,  if  such  scholarship  be  made  an 
end  to  itself,  it  may  prove  a  decided 
evil  to  him  who  makes  it  an  end  to 
itself;  for  his  own  intellectual  and 
spiritual  life  is  more  or  less  subordi- 
nated to  it,  and  he  is  in  danger  of 
becoming  desiccated  into  a  Dr.  Dryas- 
dust. 'Is  not  the  life  more  than  the 
food,  and  the  body  more  than  the 
raiment? ' 

It  requires  a  man  of  exceptionally 
strong  powers  to  bear  great  acquire- 
ments without  being  weighed  down 
by  them.  Where  one  of  great  ac- 
quirements   does   not    possess    strong 


44  THE    AIMS   OF 

asserting  and  resisting  powers,  the 
degeneracy  which  may  be,  and  often 
is,  induced  by  an  uncontrolled  scholar- 
ship, manifests  itself,  in  many  cases, 
through  a  piddling  analysis  which  has 
no  end  beyond  itself.  That  is  a  quite 
reliable  symptom  of  such  degeneracy. 
One  can  get  deeply  interested  in 
almost  anything  the  most  insignificant, 
if  he  keep  at  it  long  enough  to  bring 
himself  down  to  it,  even  in  second- 
hand postage  stamps.  Where  the 
intellectual  and  spiritual  powers  are 
strongly  vital,  their  dominant  ten- 
dency is  toward  synthesis  —  toward 
'bringing  together  what  else  were  dust 
from  dead  men's  bones,  into  the  unity 
of  breathing  life.'  The  more  intense 
a  man's  intellectual  and  spiritual  life 


LITERARY    STUDY.  45 

becomes,  the  more  he  demands  that 
exercise  of  his  powers  induced  by 
the  organization  of  manifold  elements 
—  elements  fused  by  the  alchemy  of 
the  imagination  into  a  new  and  living 
whole,  whose  synthesis  calls  forth  that 
harmonious  energizing  of  the  soul 
which  constitutes  its  highest  life  and 
delight. 


46  THE   AIMS   OF 


A  GREAT  impulse  has,  of  late 
years,  been  imparted  to  the  study 
of  the  English  language  and  litera- 
ture, and  that  study  has  been  intro- 
duced into  all  our  institutions  of 
learning,  from  the  highest  down  to 
the  lowest  grade;  and  in  most  of  our 
Colleges  and  Universities  it  is  repre- 
sented by  a  special  professor.  Text- 
books on  the  English  language  abound, 
and  so  do  Manuals  and  Histories  of 
English  Literature,  and  elaborately 
annotated  editions  of  selected  works 
of  classic  authors,  poetical  and  prose. 
Methods  are  discussed  ad  7iausea?n, 
almost,  in  school  institutes  and  educa- 


LITERARY    STUDY.  47 

tional  conventions,  and  the  opinions 
of  prominent  educators  are  solicited 
by  journals  of  education,  as  to  the 
best  thing  to  be  done  for  the  study 
of  English. 

But  the  question  is  far  from  gratui- 
tous whether  all  the  means  so  strenu- 
ously employed  for  the  end  in  view, 
prove  correspondingly  efficient.  They 
certainly  do  not.  The  evidences 
against  such  result  are  too  strong  to 
leave  much  faith  in  the  means  em- 
ployed. And  the  grand  defect  of 
those  means  may  be  said  to  be,  that 
the  language  and  its  literary  products 
are  not  sufficiently  studied  as  living 
organisms.  Words  are  too  much 
studied  as  completely  significant  indi- 
viduals^   and    the    study    of    literary 


48  THE   AIMS    OF 

products  is  too  much  devoted  to  their 
accidents,  and  not  enough,  scarcely  at 
all,  indeed,  to  their  substances.  Per- 
haps it  is  not  a  rash  statement  to 
make,  that  many  teachers  think  it  the 
prime  business  of  scholastic  discipline 
to  deal  with  accidents.  In  the  words 
of  Chaucer, 

Thise  cookes,  how  they  stampe,  and  streyne, 

and  grynde, 
And  turnen  substaunce  into  accident ! 

The  lamentable  ignorance  of  the 
mother  tongue  which  prevails  in  the 
lower  schools,  and  not  much  less  in 
the  Colleges  and  Universities,  will 
not  be  remedied  by  the  study  of 
text-books  on  the  language,  nor  by 
anv   amount    of    technical    instruction 


LITERARY    STUDY.  49 

imparted  by  the  teacher.  There  is, 
at  present,  a  superabundance  of  such 
study  and  such  instruction;  but  the 
results  are  certainly  very  far  from 
gratifying.  Little  or  no  vital  know- 
ledge of  the  language  is  imparted  or 
acquired  by  these  means,  and  what- 
ever susceptibility  to  literature  any 
student  might  otherwise  have,  is  more 
or  less  deadened  by  petty  details, 
grammatical,  philological,  and  other, 
and  irrelevant  matters  of  every  kind, 
which  drink  up  all  the  sap  of  the 
mind  {of?inem  sucum  ingenii  bibtuity  as 
Quintilian  says  of  the  treatises  on 
rhetoric,  in  his  time),  make  impos- 
sible all  continuity  of  thought  and 
feeling,  and  shut  off  all  synthetic 
appreciation.     Here  is,  no  doubt,  one 


50  THE   AIMS    OF 

explanation  of  the  very  limited  stock 
of  thought  which  many  students  pos- 
sess, after  having  been  for  several 
years  at  school.  It  would  seem  that 
thought  were  not  an  object  in  'liter- 
ary '  exercises,  to  say  nothing  of 
feeling,  but  formulae  and  technical 
knowledge  of  various  kinds.  Students 
are  taught  methods,  but  comparatively 
few  attain  unto  the  proposed  objects 
of  the  methods,  which  objects  are 
often  lost  sight  of,  altogether,  in  the 
gri)id  to  which  they  are  subjected. 
It  is  the  merest  truism  that  the 
leading  aim  in  the  teaching  of  Eng- 
lish should  be,  i.  to  enlarge  the 
student's  vocabulary,  and,  2.  to  culti- 
vate a  nice  sense  of  the  force  of 
words   which    constitute    a   large   pro- 


LITERARY    STUDY.  5  I 

portion  of  every  language,  whose 
meanings  are  not  absolute,  but  rela- 
tive and  conditional,  being  variously 
modified  and  shaded  according  to 
their  organization  in  the  expression 
of  thought  and  feeling;  and,  3.  (the 
sole  end  of  i  and  2),  to  speak  and 
write  good  live  English,  of  the  best 
verbal  material  and  texture,  and 
closely  fitting  the  thought  which  it 
clothes.  John  Philpot  Curran  once 
said  of  an  advocate  whose  language 
was  too  big  and  sounding  for  his 
thought,  'it  will  never  do  for  a  man 
to  turn  painter  merely  on  the  strength 
of  having  a  pot  of  colors  by  him, 
unless  he  know  how  to  lay  them  on. ' 
These  three  things  can  be  secured 
(the   capacity   for  them   being  postu- 


52  THE    AIMS    OF 

lated)  only  through  an  extensive  and 
sympathetic  reading  of  good  authors, 
the  subject-matter  being  made  the 
prime  object,  and  the  ne  quid  nimis 
being  strictly  observed  in  incidental 
instruction,  that  the  student's  thought 
and  feeling  be  not  kept  disintegrated. 
It  is  in  their  social  life,  so  to 
speak,  that  a  large  proportion  of 
words  must  be  known,  to  be  truly 
known.  As  solitaries,  they  are  more 
or  less  opaque,  reflect  no  variety  of 
hue,  do  not  come  into  relation  with 
feeling.  Their  radical  ideas  may  be 
learned  from  dictionaries,  and  these 
are  all  that  the  mere  word-monger, 
who  makes  words  an  end  to  them- 
selves, may  know  of  them.  They 
must   be   variously   organized    in    the 


LITERARY    STUDY.  53 

expression  of  thought  and  feeling 
before  all  their  moral  potentialities 
are  brought  out. 

Take,  for  example,  the  word  'moral, ' 
just  used,  and  see  the  variety  of  shade 
and  extension  of  meaning  it  admits 
of,  as  illustrated  by  the  passages  cited 
from  various  authors,  in  the  Century 
Dictionary.  Or  take  the  common  word 
'even,'  adjective  and  adverb,  as  used 
by  Shakespeare,  whose  varied  force, 
derived  from  context,  is  so  well  set 
forth  and  illustrated  in  Dr.  Alexan- 
der Schmidt's  'Shakespeare-Lexicon.' 
Shakespeare,  as  a  great  expresser,  one 
of  the  greatest  of  whom  we  have 
record,  knew,  and  had  to  know,  words 
in  their  social  life,  or,  rather  say,  in 
their    inherent   capabilities    of    social 


54  THE    AIMS    OF 

life;  for  he  first  brought  out,  in  a 
very  large  number  of  words,  those 
capabilities.  He  caused  them  to  take 
on  a  variety  of  coloring  according  to 
their  relationships.  But  this  variety 
of  coloring  cannot  be  adequately 
presented,  really  cannot  be  presented 
at  all,  in  definitions,  however  precise 
they  may  be.  It  can  be  presented  only 
in  the  passages  in  the  plays  in  which 
such  words  occur.  Apart  from  the 
passages  which  illustrate  their  change- 
able hues,  definitions  are  barren. 

Such  an  author  as  Washington  Irv- 
ing, whose  matter  is  always  interest- 
ing, always  delightful,  indeed,  and 
whose  use  of  language  is  so  unaffected 
and  free  from  strain,  would  be  excel- 
lent   for    young    students.      Through 


LITERARY    STUDY.  55 

such  an  author,  their  vocabulary  could 
be  enlarged  in  a  most  pleasing  way, 
and  they  could  hardly,  unless  very 
stupid,  get  false  impressions  of  mean- 
ing, from  the  author's  nice  use  of 
words.  They  could  also  be  more  or 
less  unconsciously  impressed  as  to  the 
peculiar  domains  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
and  the  Latin  vocabularies  of  the  lan- 
guage; for  Irving' s  writings  exhibit 
everywhere  the  influence  upon  his 
vocabulary  of  his  subject  and  purpose. 
According  as  any  composition  of  his 
is  keyed,  so  to  speak,  is  there  a 
greater  or  less  proportion  of  Latin  or 
Anglo-Saxon  words.  It  would  be  hard 
to  find  a  Latin  word  used  where  its 
Saxon  equivalent,  if  there  is  one, 
would   be    preferable,    or    vice    versa. 


56  THE    AIMS    OF 

Better  is  it  than  a  mere  conformity 
to  the  general  advice  so  often  given, 
to  use  Saxon  words  in  preference  to 
those  of  Latin  origin,  to  have  a  nice 
sense  of  the  peculiar  domains  of  these 
two  chief  elements  of  the  language; 
and  this  nice  sense  can  be  best 
derived  from  the  reading  of  authors 
who  wrote  unaffectedly  and  with  an 
unerring  feeling  of  those  domains. 

Furthermore,  and  moi-e  than  all, 
students  who  should  read  sympatheti- 
cally all  of  Irving' s  works,  with  the 
requisite  guidance  and  inspiration 
from  the  teacher  (and  a  teacher  with- 
out inspiring  power  should  have  noth- 
ing to  do  with  conducting  literary 
studies)  could  hardly  help  being 
wholesomely  influenced  by  the  genial 


LITERARY    STUDY.  57 

personality  of  the  author  which  every- 
where informs  them.  And  inspiring 
power  must  come  from  an  author's  or 
a  teacher's  beings  and  not  from  his 
brain. 

Being  is  teaching,  the  highest,  the 
only  quickening  mode  of  teaching; 
the  only  mode  which  secures  that 
unconscious  following  of  a  superior 
spirit  by  an  inferior  spirit  —  of  a 
kindled  soul  by  an  unkindled  soul. 
'Surely,'  says  Walt  Whitman, 

Surely   whoever    speaks    to    me    in    the    right 

voice,  him  or  her  I  shall  follow, 
As  the  water  follows  the  mooh,  silently,  with 

fluid  steps  anywhere  around  the  globe. 

And  so,  to  get  at  the  being  of  a  great 
author,  to  come  into  relationship  with 
his  absolute  personality,  is  the  highest 


58  THE    AIMS    OF 

result  of  the  study  of  his  works.  I 
have  just  said,  par  parenthese,  that  a 
teacher  without  inspiring  power  should 
have  nothing  to  do  with  conducting 
literary  studies.  The  teacher  who 
unites  in  himself  a  fulness  of  intel- 
lectual and  spiritual  vitality,  in  whom 
the  'what  Knows'  and  the  Svhat  Is' 
work  harmoniously  together,  is  an 
epistle  known  and  read  of  all  his 
students.  The  young  are  quicker, 
often,  to  discover  such  vitality,  or  the 
want  of  it,  than  adults  are.  After  a 
recitation  or  a  lecture,  they  feel  their 
faculties  refreshed  or  dulled,  accord- 
ing to  the  vitality  or  non-vitality  of 
their  teacher.  The  inspiring  power 
of  personality  is  quite  as  much  needed 
in  scientific  teaching.     Many  are  the 


LITERARY    STUDY.  59 

men  still  living,  in  whom  the  great 
naturalist,  Professor  Louis  Agassiz, 
continues  to  live,  in  this  world.  And 
they  are  far  superior  as  naturalists  by- 
reason  of  what  he  elicited  from  them 
of  the  'what  Is.'  He  thus  brought 
them  into  a  deeply  sympathetic  rela- 
tionship with  the  animal  kingdom  — 
a  relationship  which  is  the  condition 
of  sagacious  insight. 

I  have  named  Irving  as  peculiarly 
adapted  to  the  ends  stated;  but  Eng- 
lish and  ^American  literature,  it  need 
not  be  said,  abounds  in  material, 
poetical  and  prose,  equally  excellent, 
equally  informed  with  the  personali- 
ties of  their  authors,  and  fitted  for 
all  grades  of  students  in  the  lower 
schools. 


6o  THE    AIMS    OF 

For  range  of  power,  for  great 
diversity  of  subject,  for  poetic,  philo- 
sophic, and  logical  cast  of  mind,  for 
depth  of  feeling,  for  an  inspiring 
vitality  of  thinking,  for  periodic  and 
impassioned  prose  which,  running 
through  the  whole  gamut  of  expres- 
sion, is  unequalled  in  English  Litera- 
ture, no  more  educating  author  could 
be  selected  for  advanced  students  than 
Thomas  De  Quincey.  A  good  educa- 
tion in  the  language  as  a  living 
organism,  could  be  got  through  his 
writings  alone;  and  his  wealth  and 
vitality  of  thought  and  feeling  could 
hardly  fail,  unless  opposed  by  extra- 
ordinary obtuseness,  to  excite  and 
enliven,  and  strengthen  the  best  facul- 
ties  of    thought   and    feeling    in    any 


LITERARY    STUDY.  6 1 

reader.  How  much  a  student  might 
do  for  himself,  by  loyally  reading  all 
of  De  Quincey's  Works,  as  they  are 
presented  in  Dr.  Masson's  edition! 
And  by  loyally  reading,  I  do  not 
mean  accepting  everything  as  gospel, 
but  reading  with  an  undivided  intent 
mind  and  open  heart;  in  short,  giving 
the  best  of  himself  to  the  author,  for 
the  time  being. 

Students  do  not  do  enough  for  them- 
selves, in  these  days  of  vast  educa- 
tional machinery.  They  for  the  most 
part  confine  themselves  to  the  pre- 
scribed work  of  the  schools.  They 
are,  in  fact,  obliged  to  do  this,  in 
order  to  keep  up  with  the  heterogene- 
ous class  work  imposed  upon  them, 
and     to    prepare     for     examinations. 


62  THE    ALMS    OF 

They  have  so  much  to  gobble  up  that, 
to  turn  aside  to  read,  in  a  genial, 
sympathetic  way,  a  great  inspiring 
author,  as  they  should  be  encouraged, 
and  allowed  an  opportunity,  to  do,  is 
quite  impossible.  The  school  bill  of 
fare,  with  moral  dyspepsia  in  its  wake, 
must  be  gone  through  with,  mat 
coeluvi. 

A  distinguished  Greek  professor 
told  me,  some  time  ago,  that  he  had 
great  difficulty  in  inducing  even  his 
most  advanced  students,  to  read  Greek 
authors  outside  of  the  prescribed 
course,  and  added  that  when  he  was 
a  boy,  at  College,  he  and  others  of 
his  class,  would  arrange  to  read  among 
themselves  large  quantities  of  Greek 
literature,  without  the  knowledge  of  the 


LITERARY    STUDY.  63 

professor.  I  fear  such  things  are  but 
rarely  done  in  these  days,  not  because 
students  are  less  earnest  than  they 
once  were  (they  were  never  more 
earnest,  perhaps,  than  they  are  at 
present);  nor  because  the  best  pro- 
fessors are  less  inspiring,  but  because 
they  have  not  the  requisite  leisure. 
The  one  prime  object,  I  iterate, 
to  be  always  kept  in  view,  is,  that  the 
minds  and  feelings  of  students  be 
occupied  with  the  subject-matter,  and 
be  diverted  from  that  as  little  as  pos- 
sible. It  may  seem  to  many  culti- 
vated people,  who  are  not  conversant 
with  the  'literary'  exercises  of  the 
schools,  at  the  present  time,  that  to 
insist  upon  making  the  subject-matter 
the  prime  object,  is  quite  gratuitous, 


64  THE    AIMS    OF 

such  object  being  with  them  a  thing 
of  course.  But  it  is  very  far  from 
being  gratuitous.  There  is  nothing 
in  literary  study  which  needs  so  much, 
at  the  present  time,  to  be  insisted 
upon.  It  is  perhaps  not  going  too 
far  to  say  that,  in  the  literary  study 
of  the  schools,  the  subject-matter  is 
gene7'ally  subordinated  to,  and  its 
virtue  quite  nullified  by,  verbal  and 
syntactical  exegesis,  and  other  school- 
master things,  which  are  dealt  with 
for  their  own  sake. 

It  is  through  the  subject-matter, 
too,  that  the  interest  of  students  can 
be  best  maintained  (young  people  are 
always  interested  in  whatever  has  life 
in  it,  which  cannot  be  so  truly  said 
of  some  of  their  teachers);  and  if  so 


LITERARY    STUDY.  65 

maintained,  whatever  incidental  in- 
struction may  be  called  for  (and  to 
be  called  for,  it  must  be  relevant  to 
the  subject-matter),  will  tell  the  better 
upon  them.  But  even  if  relevant,  it 
must  not  be  allowed  to  divert  the 
current  of  thought  and  feeling  into 
standing  pools. 

By  a  close  adherence  to  the  subject- 
matter,  a  love  of  thought  would  in  time 
be  induced.  There  are  many  learned 
people  who  have  not  attained,  witli 
all  their  learning,  to  a  love  of  thought. 
And  one  may  be  painfully  learned  and 
yet  have  an  unkindled  soul.  I  have 
known  'good  '  students  who  were  de- 
cidedly averse  to  thought.  They  pre- 
ferred exercising  their  minds,  or, 
rather,  indulging  their  minds,   in  the 

E 


66  THE   ALMS   OF 

minutiae  of  literary  scholarship  which 
demanded  little  or  no  mental  grasp. 
They  were  very  laborious  in  doing 
nothing. 

(By  subject-matter,  I  should  be- 
fore have  explained,  I  do  not  mean, 
simply,  the  articulating  thought  of  a 
literary  production,  poetical  or  prose, 
but  all  that  is  embodied  in  the  organic 
shapings  of  the  language  —  the  expres- 
sion, in  its  fullest  sense,  some  of 
which  is  addressed  to,  and  must  be 
apprehended  by,  the  intellect,  some 
of  which  is  addressed  to  the  suscep- 
tible nature,  and  must  be  sympa- 
thetically assimilated;  —  in  short,  the 
author's  whole  vieaning,  intellectual 
and  spiritual.) 

Again,   reading  must   not  be   done 


LITERARY    STUDY.  67 

in  expectation  of  an  examination  on 
details.  The  teacher  might  talk  with 
his  class  familiarly,  and  encourage  the 
class  to  talk,  about  their  reading  — 
its  subject-matter,  of  course.  He 
could  thus  get  a  sufficient  estimate 
of  their  varied  appreciation,  to  grade 
them  (if  that  were  necessary);  but  he 
should  not  directly  'examine'  them, 
to  determine  what  each  should  be 
'marked,'  on  a  scale  of  ten,  or  a 
hundred,  or  any  other  scale  which 
might  be  adopted  in  the  school. 
They  would  then  read  for  the  ex- 
amination, and  would  thus  be  more 
or  less  shut  off  from  some  of  the 
best  influences  which  might  otherwise 
act  upon  them. 

Examinations  are  the  bane  of  liter- 


68  THE    AIMS    OF 

ary  study,  for  the  reason  that  they 
largely  determine  the  character  of  this 
study,  in  the  schools.  They  must 
deal  specially,  if  not  exclusively,  with 
the  definite,  with  matters  of  fact,  and 
these  are  accordingly  made  the  main 
subject  of  study.  Examinations  on 
a  play  of  Shakespeare,  have  generally 
nothing  to  do  with  the  play  as  a  play, 
with  the  dramatic  action,  with  the 
artistic  expression  in  its  highest  sense; 
they  are  rather  examinations  on  Eliza- 
bethan English,  and  de  onuiibus  rebus 
et  quibusdam  atiis,  except  the  play. 
But,  as  Hamlet  says,  in  quite  another 
connection,  'the  play's  the  thing.' 
The  opinion  is  prevalent  among 
educators,  that  clear,  definite,  intel- 
lectual conceptions  are  the  only  meas- 


LITERARY    STUDY.  69 

lire  of  true  education;  and  that  in- 
definite impressions,  in  order  to  be 
educating,  must  be  intellectualized  as 
far  as  possible;  that  truly  to  know 
really  means  this.  On  the  contrary, 
it  may  be  maintained,  that  in  the 
domain  of  the  spiritual  (and  to  this 
domain  the  higher  literature  primarily 
l)elongs),  it  is  all  important  that 
indefinite  impressions,  derived,  for 
example,  from  a  great  creation  of 
genius,  should  long  be  held  in  solu- 
tion (to  use  a  chemical  figure),  and 
not  be  prematurely  precipitated  into 
barren  judgments  which  have  no 
quickening  power.  They  then  cease 
to  have  a  spiritual  action.  One  should 
be  well  cliarged  with  a  great  author, 
through  long,  sympathetic,  Svisely  pas- 


70  THE    AIMS    OF 

sive'  reading  of  his  works,  before  any 
attempt  be  made  at  defining,  formu- 
lating, precipitating,  which  'refuse  the 
soul  its  way.'  But  the  tendency  is 
strong  in  the  other  direction  —  so 
strong  as  to  lead  to  the  attempt  to 
'make  square  to  a  finite  eye  the  circle 
of  infinity.'  In  this  respect,  the 
squaring  of  the  circle  has  not  yet 
been  given  up. 

We  must  long  inhale  the  choral 
atmosphere  of  a  work  of  genius  before 
we  attempt,  if  we  attempt  at  all,  any 
intellectual  formulation  of  it;  which 
formulation  must  necessarily  be  com- 
paratively limited,  because  genius,  as 
genius,  is  transcendental,  and  there- 
fore outside  of  the  domain  of  the 
intellect.     The    human  spirit  can  be 


LITERARY    STUDY.  7 1 

educated  only  through  the  concrete 
and  the  personal;  and  these  may  be 
said  to  constitute  the  vernacular  lan- 
guage of  genius.  But  if  this  language, 
in  our  educational  systems,  be  trans- 
lated into  the  abstract,  into  the  lan- 
guage of  the  intellect,  so  far  as  it  can 
be,  its  proper  function  is  defeated. 
The  spiritual  man  is  not  responsive 
to  the  abstract.  The  word  must  be- 
come flesh  in  order  to  be  spiritually 
responded  to.  The  response  of  the 
intellect  to  the  abstract,  does  not 
quicken. 

The  intellect  should  be  trained  and 
habituated  to  clear,  distinct,  and  ade- 
quate conceptions  concerningall  things 
that  are  objects  of  clear  conceptions. 
But  it  must  hot  be  unduly  fostered  to 


72  THE    AIMS    OF 

the  benumbing  of  the  spiritual  facul- 
ties. That  such  benumbing  often 
results  from  such  cause,  is  unquestion- 
able. 

The  most  practical  education  (but 
this,  so  considered,  preeminently 
practical  age  does  not  seem  to  know 
it)  is  the  education  of  the  spiritual 
man;  for  it  is  this,  and  not  the 
education  of  the  intellectual  man, 
which  is,  must  be  (or  Christianity  has 
made  a  great  mistake)  the  basis  of 
individual  character;  and  to  individ- 
ual character  (not  so  much  to  institu- 
tions, to  the  regulations  of  society,  to 
the  State,  to  moral  codes)  humanity 
chiefly  owes  its  sustainment. 

There  have  been  men  who  were,  in 
their    time    and    place,    regarded    as 


LITER.A.RY    STUDY.  73 

wholly  unpractical.  Nobody  could  see 
what  they  were  good  for  in  this  world. 
But  they  really  were  the  most  practical 
men  of  their  generation  —  the  most 
practical  by  reason  of  their  contribu- 
tions to  the  spiritual  life  of  the  world. 

The  Lord  promised  Abraham  that 
he  would  spare  Sodom  for  the  sake  of 
fifty  righteous  men,  and  that  he  would 
not  destroy  it  for  lack  of  five  of  those 
fifty,  of  ten,  of  twenty,  of  thirty,  of 
forty.     (Genesis,  xviii,  26-32.) 

Perhaps,  at  the  present  day,  there 
are  cities  which  might  spiritually  be 
called  Sodoms,  and  which  are  saved 
from  destruction  by  as  small  a  number 
of  the  righteous  (in  Hebrew  phrase, 
those  to  whom  the  Lord  speaks,  or 
with  whom  the  Lord  is).     These  are 


74  THE    AIMS    OF 

more  than  men  of  sharpened  intellects. 
They  have  that  which  is  represented 
as  the  one  source  of  strength  for  all 
the  heroes  of  Hebrew  history.  The 
Lord  is  with  them ;  that  is,  their 
j;/5'/>////'^/ rectification  has  brought  them 
into  a  greater  or  less  degree  of  har- 
mony with  the  divine  immanence. 

To  return  now  from  this  digression, 
and  drop  down  to  the  suspended  sub- 
ject of  examinations:  this  is  the  great 
objection  to  them  in  literary  study, 
that  they  must  necessarily  be  based  on 
the  intellectually  definite  elements  of 
a  literary  work  —  on  the  intellectual 
articulation  of  it  —  and  they  thus 
necessarily  induce  an  exclusive  atten- 
tion on  the  part  of  students,  to  these 
elements,  and  shut  them  off,  more  or 


LITER.\RY    STUDY.  75 

less,  from  the  life  of  the  work  studied. 
The  time  must  come,  it  is  perhaps  in 
the  far  future,  when  literary  examina- 
tions will  be  through  vocal  interpreta- 
tion which  will  reveal  the  extent  of  a 
student's  assimilation  of  the  intellec- 
tually indefinite  elements  of  a  literary 
work.  But  there  will  then  have  to  be 
higher  ideals  of  vocal  culture  than  the 
educational  world,  at  the  present  time, 
can  boast  of. 

I  have  been  present  at  literary  ex- 
aminations which  brought  out  answers, 
acceptable  indeed  to  the  examiners, 
but  which  no  more  evidenced  the 
students'  knowledge  of  the  works  on 
which  they  were  examined,  than  the 
boy  Bitzer's  definition  of  a  horse,  in 
the    2d  Chapter  of    Dickens's  'Hard 


76  THE    AIMS    OF 

Times,'  evidenced  that  he  knew  any- 
thing of  the  noble  animal  he  defined, 
though  it  was  entirely  satisfactory  to 
Thomas  Gradgrind,  the  examiner  on 
the  occasion,  who  believed  that  'facts 
alone  are  wanted  in  life.  Plant  noth- 
ing else,  and  root  out  everything  else  :  ' 

'Quadruped.  Graminivorous.  Forty 
teeth,  namely,  twenty-four  grinders, 
four  eye-teeth,  and  twelve  incisive. 
Sheds  coat  in  the  spring;  in  marshy 
countries,  sheds  hoofs,  too.  Hoofs 
hard,  but  requiring  to  be  shod  with 
iron.     Age  known  by  marks  in  mouth.' 

Hereupon,  Mr.  Gradgrind  said  to 
poor  little  Sissy  Jupe,  who  had  been 
asked  to  define  a  horse,  but  who,  in 
her  trepidation,  could  not,  'Now,  girl 
number  twenty,  you  know  what  a  horse 


LITERARY    STUDY.  77 

is.'  Yes,  she  did  know,  with  a  ven- 
geance, if  her  knowledge  was  derived 
from  Bitzer's  definition. 

Let  it  not  be  understood  that  there 
is  implied  in  the  foregoing  remarks, 
any  depreciation  of  grammatical,  phil- 
ological, rhetorical,  or  any  other  kind 
of  instruction  for  which  the  work 
studied  affords  material.  Philology, 
on  its  higher  planes,  is  a  great 
science,  one  of  the  greatest,  indeed, 
which  has  been  developed  in  modern 
times.  But  it  is  a  science.  It  is  not 
literature.  And  in  literary  study,  the 
only  true  object  of  which  is  to  take 
in  the  life  of  the  work  studied,  that 
object  must  not  be  defeated  by  the 
teacher's  false  notions  of  thorough- 
ness, which    result    in    his    obtruding 


78  THE    ALMS    OF 

Upon  the  student's  attention  all  man- 
ner of  irrelevant  things,  even  to  the 
utter  exclusion  of  the  one  thing  need- 
ful. The  irrelevant  things  may  have 
their  importance,  but  they  must  also 
have  their  proper  time  and  place.  A 
man  of  reputed  wisdom  once  said,  'to 
everything  there  is  a  season,  and  a 
time  to  every  purpose  (or  matter) 
under  the  heaven.'  It  is  not  in 
season,  for  example,  for  a  teacher, 
while  pretending  to  study,  with  a 
class,  a  poem,  as  a  poem,  to 

chase 
A  panting  syllable  through  time  and  space, 
Start  it  at  home,  and  hunt  it  in  the  dark, 
To  Gaul,  to  Greece,  and  into  Noah's  ark. 

And  yet  such  unseasonable  things  are 
done,   in    these   philological  days,  in 


LITERARY    STUDY.  79 

the  name  of  literary  study.  If  the 
poem  were  studied  merely  as  a  monu- 
ment of  the  language,  and  the  study 
were  called  philological,  there  would 
be  no  objection  thereto.  But  when 
philological  study  sails  under  false 
colors,  it  does  a  wrong  to  what  must 
certainly  be  considered  the  higher 
study,  upon  which  it  should  never  be 
obtruded,  when  that  study  is  going 
on,  except  where  its  services  are  really 
in  requisition;  and  they  rarely  are,  in 
strictly  literary  study.  All  the  philo- 
logical knowledge  which  may  really 
be  needed,  can  be  found  in  Webster's 
International,  The  Century,  Skeat's 
Etymological,  or  any  other  good  dic- 
tionary in  present  use. 

When    a    student    perfectly   under- 


8o  THE   AIMS    OF 

stands  a  familiar  word,  in  a  poem,  or 
any  other  composition  he  may  be 
reading,  to  obtrude  its  etymology, 
however  interesting  it  may  be,  upon 
his  attention,  is  an  impertinence  pure 
and  simple.  For  example,  every  civi- 
lized, English-speaking  boy  or  girl 
knows  what  a  sofa  is.  In  the  follow- 
ing passage  from  Cowper's  Task  (Book 
1.  vv.  86-88), 

Thus  first  necessity  invented  stools, 
Convenience  next  suggested  elbow  chairs, 
And  luxury  the  accomplished  Sofa  last, 

the  word  'accomplished,'  as  used 
here,  really  needs  explanation;  but  in 
two  different  editions  of  'The  Task,' 
in  my  library,  prepared  for  the  use  of 
the  young,  no  explanation  is  given  of 


LITERARY    STUDY.  8  I 

it,  but  in  both,  the  Arabic  origin 
of  'sofa'  is  given,  in  one  the  ques- 
tion is  asked  what  other  words  in 
English  have  been  derived  from  the 
Arabic,  and  in  the  other,  the  student 
is  required  to  explain  'accomplished.' 
In  the  name  of  all  that  is  reasonable, 
what  has  the  young  student  to  do  with 
words  of  Arabic  origin,  while  he  is 
reading  Cowper's  Task?  Uncalled 
for,  wholly  unnecessary  information  is 
obtruded  upon  the  student's  attention, 
and  an  explanation  is  required  of  him 
which  it  was  the  business  of  the  editor 
himself  to  give. 

The  true  aim  of  culture  is  to  induce 
soul  states  or  conditions,  soul  atti- 
tudes, to  attune  the  inward  forces  to 
the  idealized  forms  of  nature  and  of 


82  THE    AIMS    OF 

human  life  produced  by  art,  and  not 
to  make  the  head  a  cockloft  for  stor- 
ing away  the  trumpery  of  barren 
knowledge,  a  greediness  for  which 
may  increase,  does  often  increase,  as 
true  intellectual  and  spiritual  vitality 
declines.  '  Parva  /eves  capiunt  animos. ' 
Literary  knowledge  and  literary  cul- 
ture are  two  quite  distinct  things  —  so 
distinct  that  a  student  may  possess  a 
large  fund  of  the  one,  and  be  almost 
destitute  of  the  other.  He  may  be 
able  to  answer  any  question  asked 
him  on  English  literary  biography, 
or  history,  or  the  cheap  philosophy 
of  English  literature  presented  in  his 
text-book,  or  on  ten  thousand  other 
things  merely  incident  to  the  litera- 
ture, without  ever  having  truly  assimi- 


LITERARY    STUDY.  S;^ 

lated  any  single  poem  or  impassioned 
prose  composition;  for  assimilation, 
in  such  case,  is  largely  a  spiritual 
process.  Such  acquirement  has,  by 
itself,  no  more  to  do  with  literary 
culture,  in  its  strict  sense,  with  the 
quickening  of  sensibility,  suscepti- 
bility, impressibility,  with  a  cultiva- 
tion of  an  instinctive  sense  of  beauty 
and  deformity,  with  that  aesthetic 
synthesis  which  every  true  literary  art 
product  demands  (and,  in  fact,  any 
other  form  of  art  product,  whether  in 
sound,  in  color,  or  stone),  than  a 
knowledge  of  all  the  contents  of 
guide-books  to  the  great  picture- 
galleries  of  Italy  has  to  do  with  an 
adequate  appreciation,  that  is,  assimi- 
lation, of  any  one  of  the  masterpieces 


84  THE   ALMS    OF 

contained  in  these  galleries.  The 
art-student  who  takes  one  picture  to 
his  heart,  does  more  than  he  who 
crams  himself  with  histories  of  art 
and  palavering  guide-books.  These 
are  all  well  enough  in  their  way,  as 
are  Manuals  and  Histories  of  Litera- 
ture; but  when  they  are  made  to  take 
the  place  of,  and  entirely  to  exclude, 
the  means  and  processes  by  and 
through  which  alone  true  culture  can 
be  reached,  if  reached  at  all,  they  are 
worse  than  useless,  for  they  tend  to 
benumb,  more  or  less,  the  faculties 
addressed  by  art. 

Fortunately,  much  of  the  finest 
genius  of  our  day  is  employing  prose 
fiction  as  its  most  efficient  instrument 
and  form;  and  students  who,  in  their 


LITERARY    STUDY.  85 

regular  literary  studies  are  fed  on 
husks,  can  turn,  and,  it  is  to  be 
hoped,  many  of  them  do  turn,  in  their 
leisure  hours,  to  great  novels  which, 
while  being  intensely  interesting,  are 
instinct  with  the  poetic,  are  informed 
with  intellect,  heart,  and  conscience, 
and  often  grapple  with  the  most  se- 
rious questions  of  life  and  destiny. 

In  studying  a  poem  with  a  class  of 
students  —  a  poem,  not  the  material 
which  it  may  afford  for  other  kinds 
of  study  —  one  very  important  aim  of 
the  teacher  should  be,  to  keep  the 
minds  of  the  class  up  as  near  as 
possible  to  'the  height  of  the  argu- 
ment'—  to  the  height  of  the  poet's 
thought  and  feeling,  and  to  guard 
against   lowering   the    temperature   of 


86  THE    AIMS    OF 

their  minds  and  feelings  with  chilling 
commonplace.  With  this  aim,  he 
should  carefully  avoid  loosening,  so 
to  speak,  more  than  is  absolutely  nec- 
essary, the  close  poetic  texture  of  the 
language;  for  it  is  all  important  that 
the  student  should  become  accustomed 
to  think  and  feel,  as  far  as  he  is  able, 
in  the  idealized  language  of  the  higher 
poetry  —  'that  condensed  presentation 
of  thought  which  leaves  a  large  mat- 
ter impressed  on  the  mind  by  a 
very  small  number  of  happily-assorted 
words.'  If  this  condensed  presenta- 
tion of  thought  is  all  resolved,  for  the 
sake  of  making  it  more  easily  compre- 
hended, the  student  might  as  well 
study  plain  prose  of  the  loosest  tex- 
ture, so  far  as  his  poetical  culture  is 


LITERARY    STUDY.  87 

concerned.  Poetry  should  be  appre- 
ciated as  directly  as  possible  through 
its  own  language,  and  not  through  a 
resolution  of  that  language  into  the 
language  of  prose.  It  is  only  by 
meeting  as  directly  as  possible  the 
elliptical  energy  of  thought  intensified 
by  feeling,  that  the  best  play  of  the 
student's  powers  is  induced.  His 
mind  will,  in  time,  attain  to  that 
tension  which  will  cause  it  to  spring 
over  the  chasms  of  a  great  poet's 
expression  instead  of  bridging  them. 


88  THE   AIMS   OF 


TN  annotated  editions  of  poems,  de- 
signed for  the  use  of  schools,  the 
word  'supply  '  should  but  rarely  appear 
in  the  notes.  But  it  crops  cut  every- 
where in  the  analysis-run-mad  system 
pursued  by  some  editors.  The  stu- 
dent is  everywhere  told  to  supply  this 
and  to  supply  that.  Every  ellipsis  is 
filled  out,  every  metaphor  is  resolved 
into  a  simile  or  elaborate  comparison, 
or  the  student  is  asked  so  to  resolve 
it,  every  Quos  ego  is  completed  by 
giving  what  the  speaker  would  prob- 
ably have  said  if  he  had  not  been 
interrupted,  or  had  not  interrupted 
himself,  as  Neptune  did  when  he  felt 


LITERARY    STUDY.  89 

he  was  losing,  through  indignation, 
his  self-control,  and  thought  it  best  to 
compose  himself  as  well  as  the  agi- 
tated waves  (^quos  ego  —  sed  niotos 
prcestat  coviponere  fliiciiis). 

The  habit  is  thus  induced  and  con- 
firmed of  reading  the  language  of 
poetry  as  a  foreign  language,  that  is, 
by  mentally  resolving  it  into  the  more 
loosely-textured,  more  familiar,  lan- 
guage of  prose. 

Ellipses  and  interruptions  and 
checked  utterances  are  really  a  part  of 
the  poetic  or  dramatic  expression 
itself. 

Macbeth,  in  his  soliloquy  ('If  it 
were  done  when  'tis  done,'  etc.,  A.  i. 
S.  vii.),  omits,  in  his  great  eagerness 
for  news  when  Lady  Macbeth  enters. 


90  THE    AIMS    OF 

the  last  word  of  the  sentence  he  is 
uttering,  and  this  omission  has  a  dra- 
matic effect  which  would  be  lessened 
if  the  last  word  were  supplied: 

I  have  no  spur 
To  prick  the  sides  of  my  intent,  but  only 
Vaulting  ambition,  which  o'erleaps  itself 
And  falls  on  the  other  —  How  now  ?     What 
news  ?      (See  Note  3.) 

It  is  hard  even  for  the  best  qualified 
and  most  judicious  editor  of  poetry, 
to  observe  the  ne  quid  nimis,  in  his 
annotations.  He  may  be  engaged  by 
a  publishing  firm  to  prepare  an  edi- 
tion of  some  poem,  for  an  adequate 
compensation,  and  he  may  desire  that 
the  publishers  be  Gatisfied  as  to  the 
quantity  of  editorial  matter  they  get 
for  their  money.     And  so,  where  the 


LITERARY    STUDY.  91 

subject-matter,  for  some  distance,  does 
not  need  elucidrttion,  he  will  be 
tempted,  in  order  that  no  page  go 
without  its  notes,  to  introduce  un- 
called for  etymologies,  and  other  mere 
obstructions  to  the  current  of  the 
student's  thought  and  feeling. 

Students  are  often  required,  in  the 
schools,  to  write  out  paraphrases  of 
poems  —  an  exercise  very  much  to  be 
condemned.  It  is  a  very  old  exer- 
cise, but  it  is  certainly  none  the  better 
for  being  old.  It  prevents  the  mind 
from  becoming  conformed  to  the  con- 
triving spirit  of  poetic  genius,  as 
exhibited  in  the  elliptical  and,  wholly 
relatively  speaking,  inverted  construc- 
tion of  poetic  language. 

I  have  in  my  library  'The  first  six 


92  THE    AIMS    OF 

books  of  Tslilton's  Paradise  Lost,  ren- 
dered into  grammatical  construction; 
the  words  of  the  text  being  arranged, 
at  the  bottom  of  each  page,  in  the 
same  natural  order  with  the  concep- 
tions of  the  mind;  and  the  ellipsis 
properly  supplied,  without  any  altera- 
tion in  the  diction  of  the  poem.  .  .  . 
Designed  for  the  use  of  our  most 
eminent  schools,  and  of  private  gen- 
tlemen and  ladies;  and  also  of  for- 
eigners of  distinction,  who  would 
read  this  admirable  poem  with  un- 
derstanding and  taste.  By  the  late 
James  Buchanan,  author  of  the  Brit- 
ish Grammar,  etc.   .   .   .     Edinburgh : 

I773-' 

To  read  the  Paradise  Lost  in  such 
an   edition  would   be    almost  as   bad 


LITEFLVRY    STUDY.  93 

as  to  read  it  in  the  'emended  '  text 
of  Dr.  Bentley's  edition,  with  all  its 
'wild  and  unfeeling  corruptions.' 

'The  words  of  the  text,'  says  the 
title  of  Buchanan's  Milton,  'being 
arranged  ...  in  the  same  natural 
order  with  the  conceptions  of  the 
mind.' 

'Natural,'  as  applied  to  the  order 
of  words  in  a  sentence,  is  a  purely 
relative  term,  the  order  being  largely 
determined  by  the  degree  to  which 
thought  is  impassioned  or  unimpas- 
sioned.  What  is  really  meant  by  the 
'natural'  order  of  words,  in  a  sen- 
tence, in  any  language,  is  that  which 
is  the  usual  order;  but  an  unusual 
order,  due  to  the  intensifying  effect 
upon  the  mind,  of  strong  feeling,  is 


94  THE    AIMS    OF 

certainly  no  less  natural  —  it  is,  so  to 
speak,  more  highly  natural.  We  are 
more  familiar  with  the  natural  on  the 
lower  planes.  The  question  should 
be  whether  the  so-called  inversions 
(and  whatever  other  features  may 
characterize  the  diction  of  the  higher 
poetry  and  differentiate  it  from  that 
of  plain,  unimpassioned  prose),  be 
organic,  that  is,  be  inr^eparable  from 
the  exp?'ession;  and  if  so,  they  are 
'natural' — just  as  natural  as  the 
order  of  the  plainest  prose.  They 
are  the  result  of  formative  feeling, 
and  they  should  be  received  by  the 
mind  of  the  reader  in  their  organic 
character,  otherwise  the  special  effect 
resulting  from  the  construction  of  the 
language  is  lost.     The  effect  of 


LITERARY    STUDY.  95 

Back  to  thy  punishment, 
False  fugitive,  and  to  thy  speed  add  wings, 
Lest  with  a  whip  of  scorpions  I  pursue 
Thy  lingering, 

is  quite  different  from  that  of  'False 
fugitive,  go  back  to  thy  punishment, 
and  add  wings  to  thy  speed,  lest  I 
pursue  thy  lingering  with  a  whip  of 
scorpions,'  as  Buchanan  puts  it,  in 
what  he  calls  'the  same  natural  order 
with    the   conceptions  of    the    mind.' 

The  'natural '  order,  then,  is  a  vari- 
able order,  depending  largely  upon  the 
pitch  of   the  mind   and  the   feelings. 

The  order  of  the  words  of  the  angel 
announcing  the  fall  of  Babylon  (Rev. 
xiv,  8,  and  xviii,  2),  is  more  'natural ' 
in  the  Greek,  and  in  the  Latin  of  the 
Vulgate,  than  it  is  in  the  King  James's 


g6  THE   AIMS    OF 

version,  as  it  expresses  more  distinctly 
the  dominant  idea  in  the  mind  of  the 
angel : 

"ETTfiTe;'  eweae  Ba^vXwv  tj  fieydXr), 

Cecidit,  cecidit  Babylon  ilia  magna, 

Babylon    is  fallen,   is    fallen,   that    great    city 

(xiv,  8), 
Babylon  the  great  is  fallen,  is  fallen  (xviii,  2). 

The  Revision  gives  what  is,  under 
the  circumstances,  the  more  'natural' 
order : 

Fallen,  fallen  is  Babylon  the  great. 

This,  then,  is  the  conclusion  of  the 
whole  matter:  organic  forms  of  lan- 
guage, to  be  educating,  must  be  directly 
apprehended  by  the  mind,  and  not  be 
rf'dormed  by  being  extenuated  (thinned 
out),  disordered,  or  disarranged. 


LITERARY    STUDY.  97 

It  is  all  important  that  in  early  life 
concrete  standards  of  poetry  be  im- 
planted in  the  mind  and  feelings  — 
standards  in  the  form  of  passages  from 
the  great  Masters  of  Song,  in  which 
spiritualized  thought  has  reached  the 
ultimate  limits  of  expression,  the 
thought  and  the  feeling  having  taken 
on  forms  which  are  inseparable  from 
themselves.  Abstract  standards,  in 
estimating  poetry,  are  of  but  little 
worth,  if,  indeed,  they  are  worth  any- 
thing. And  people  who  need  defini- 
tions of  poetry,  are  generally  people 
who  have  not  experienced  much  of 
the  thing  itself.  With  those  who 
have,  poetry  is  poetry,  and  there  an 
end. 

Anyone  who,  when  a  child,  had  his 


98  THE    AIMS    OF 

memor}'  well  stored  with  passages 
from  the  great  poets,  and  who,  later, 
more  fully  assimilated  them,  has 
within  himself  a  standard  far  more 
reliable  than  any  abstract  standards 
he  may  have  been  taught  —  a  standard 
which  he  will  more  or  less  spontane- 
ously and  unconsciously  apply,  in  his 
reading  of  poetry,  according  as  that 
standard  has  become  a  part  of  him- 
self. The  poets  whose  triumphant 
expressions  he  has  lovingly  assimi- 
lated, live  in  //////,  according  to  his 
assimilating  capacity,  and  he  need  not 
consult  any  objective  narrowly  formu- 
lated law,  as  he  has,  to  a  greater  or 
less  degree,  the  higher  law  which  is 
beyond  formulation,  within  himself. 


I 


LITERARY   STUDY.  99 


T  TOW  is  the  best  response  to  the 
essential  life  of  a  poem  to  be 
secured  by  the  teacher  from  the  stu- 
dent? I  answer,  hf  the  fullest  inter- 
pretative vocal  rendering  of  it.  (And 
by  'fullest'  I  mean,  that  the  vocal 
rendering  must  exhibit  not  only  the 
definite  intellectual  articulation  or 
framework  of  a  poem,  through  empha- 
sis, grouping,  etc.,  but  must,  through 
intonation,  varied  quality  of  voice, 
and  other  means,  exhibit  that  which  is 
indefinite  to  the  intellect.  T/ie  latter 
is  the  ?nain  object  of  vocal  rendenng. 
A  product  of  the  insulated  intellect 
does  not  need  a  vocal  rendering. 


lOO  THE   ALMS    OF 

On  the  part  of  the  teacher,  two 
things  are  indispensable:  i.  that  he 
sympathetically  assimilate  what  con- 
stitutes the  real  life  of  the  poem,  that 
is,  its  spiritual  element  as  distin- 
guished from  the  intellectual;  2.  that 
he  have  that  vocal  cultivation  de- 
manded for  a  complete  and  effective 
rendering  of  what  he  has  assimilated. 
He  may  be  able  to  lecture  very  bril- 
liantly about  poetry,  even  about  poetry 
which  he  has  not  taken  to  himself;  he 
may,  indeed,  have  but  superficially  read 
what  he  is  lecturing  about;  his  lecture 
may  be  largely  a  rehash  of  the  criti- 
cism which  has  gathered  around  a 
certain  poem,  and  his  hearers  may 
be  charmed  with  his  fine  talk  and 
made    to    feel    that    they   have    been 


LITERARY    STUDY.  lOI 

introduced  in  a  Yery  pleasant  way 
to  the  poem  on  which  he  has  lect- 
ured, and  that  they  really  know  it. 
If  he  is  a  skilful  analyst,  he  can 
the  more  readily  convince  them  that 
he  has  put  them  in  possession  of  the 
poem,  when  the  fact  is,  they  don't 
know  it  at  all   in  its  real  life. 

If  the  two  indispensable  conditions 
I  have  mentioned  —  a  sympathetic  as- 
similation on  the  part  of  the  teacher, 
and  the  vocal  cultivation  demanded  for 
a  full  and  effective  rendition  of  what 
he  has  assimilated  —  if  these  indispen- 
sable conditions  be  not  met,  he  has 
failed  in  his  duty  to  his  students.  He 
may  not  know  and  they  may  not  know, 
that  he  has  failed  in  his  duty. 


I02  THE    AIMS    OF 

Lecturing  about  poetry  does  not, 
of  itself,  avail  any  more,  for  poetical 
cultivation,  than  lecturing  about  music 
avails,  of  itself,  for  musical  cultiva- 
tion. In  both  cases,  the  lecturing  is 
valuable  to  the  extent  to  which  vocal 
or  instrumental  interpretation  is  intro- 
duced, and  in  the  way  of  giving  shape 
to,  or  organizing,  what  has  previously 
been  felt,  to  some  extent,  on  the  part 
of  the  hearers;  but  lecturing  must  not 
take  the  place  of  inward  experience. 

When  the  high  ideal  of  vocal  culture 
presented  in  Dr.  James  Rush's  'Phi- 
losophy of  the  Human  Voice,'  shall 
have  been  generally  realized  in  the 
educational  world,  there  can  then  be 
some  hopes  entertained  of  securing 
the   best   results  of    literary   study   in 


LITERARY   STUDY.  IO3 

the  schools.  A  literary  examination 
may  then  be  made  to  mean  some- 
thing. The  student  instead  of  being 
catechised  about  the  merely  intellec- 
tual articulation  of  a  poem,  the  occa- 
sion of  its  composition,  the  influences 
which  the  poet  was  under  when  he 
composed  it,  its  vocabulary,  and  a 
thousand  other  things,  will  be  required 
to  render  it,  in  order  that  he  may 
show,  through  his  voice,  to  what  extent 
he  has  experienced  it  within  himself, 
responded  to  and  assimilated  what  the 
intellect  cannot  define  or  formulate. 

Again,  vocal  interpretation  is  the 
most  effective  mode  of  cultivating  in 
students  a  susceptibility  to  form  (or 
style,  in  its  only  true  sense).  Form 
must  first  be  addressed  to  the  feelings. 


I04  THE    AIMS    OF 

By  form  I  mean  organic  embodiment 
—  that  unification  of  matter  and  man- 
ner upon  which  so  much  of  the  vi- 
tality and  effectiveness  of  expressed 
spiritualized  thought  depend.  Form 
maybe  mechanical  —  due  to  'imposi- 
tion of  the  foreign  hand; '  but  I  speak 
of  form  as  a  manifestation  of  the  plas- 
tic spirit  of  a  poem,  and  for  such  form 
we  must  go  to  the  great  masters. 
The  literary  forms  of  a  period  are  as 
good  evidence  of  vitality  and  power 
(or  the  absence  of  these)  as  are  the 
thought  and  spirituality  which  they 
embody,  for  they  are  inseparable  from 
that  vitality.  The  wonderful  dramatic 
blank  verse  of  Shakespeare  is  the 
expression  of  great  creative  energy 
(without  the  latter  it  could  not  have 


LITERARY    STUDY.  IO5 

been  produced),  as  the  rhyming  coup- 
let of  Pope  is  the  expression  of  the 
want  of  it.  It  is  through  organic 
form  that  we  respond  to  the  moulding 
spirit;  and  adequately  to  voice  such 
form  is  the  most  effective  mode  of 
securing  a  response  on  the  part  of 
students,  to  the  moulding  spirit. 

The  style  of  any  author  who  has 
what  may  truly  be  called  style  {le  stylc^ 
c'est  rhom/nc),  is  a  manifestation  of 
his  personality  (see  Note  4);  and,  in 
order  truly  to  appreciate  his  style,  his 
personality  must  be  responded  to. 
And  such  response  must  be  a  spirit- 
ual response.  Whatever  intellectual 
analysis  be  applied,  it  must  be  based 
on  what  has  first  been  felt  to  be  the 
moulding  spirit.     Young  students  are 


T06  THE    AIMS    OF 

put  too  soon  to  the  analysis  of  style 
—  too  soon,  for  the  reason  that  they 
have  not  first /^//  it;  and  the  conse- 
quence is  that  they  are  thus  shut  off 
from  assimilating  the  moulding  spirit. 
Verse,  especially,  must  first  be 
appreciated  as  an  inseparable  part  of 
the  expression^  that  is,  felt  in  its 
organic  character,  before  it  is  ana- 
lyzed, and  it  therefore  needs,  more 
than  prose,  to  be  vocally  interpreted. 
The  mere  scholarship  of  verse  will 
not  induce  such  appreciation.  One 
may  know  all  the  scholarship  which 
has  gathered  around  the  subject  of 
prosody,  and  yet  verse  may  be  to  him 
but  little  more  than  an  artificial  form 
of  language,  quite  separable  from  the 
meaning.      One    may   be    susceptible, 


LITERARY    STUDY.  IO7 

to  a  very  subtle  degree,  to  organic 
verse,  and  know  nothing  of  the  scholar- 
ship; and  another  may  know  all  the 
scholarship,  and  be  insensible  to  it 
as  a  conductor  of  the  indefinitely 
spiritual. 

There  is  no  true  estimate  among 
the  leaders  in  the  educational  world, 
of  what  vocal  culture,  worthy  of  the 
name,  costs;  and  the  kind  of  encour- 
agement which  it  receives  from  them 
is  in  keeping  with  their  estimate  of 
it.  Vocal  culture  should  begin  very 
early,  the  earlier  the  better.  It  should 
be  one  of  the  first  things  attended  to 
in  the  primary  schools,  and  should 
be  continued  through  all  grades  of 
instruction  up  to  and  through  the 
University.     A  system  of  vocal  train- 


I08  THE    ALMS    OF 

ing  might  be  instituted  in  the  lower 
schools  which  would  give  pupils  com- 
plete command  of  the  muscles  of 
articulation,  extend  the  compass  of 
the  voice,  and  render  it  smooth, 
powerful,  and  melodious.  A  power 
of  varied  intonation  should  be  espe- 
cially cultivated,  as  it  is  through  in- 
tonation that  the  reader's  sympathies 
are  conducted,  and  the  hearer's  sym- 
pathies are  secured.  Intonation  is 
the  choral  atmosphere  of  reading. 

A  systematic  and  scientific  cultiva- 
tion of  the  reading  voice  should  be 
conducted  with  reference  to  the  ren- 
dering of  the  masterpieces  of  poetical 
and  dramatic  literature,  as  that  of  the 
singing  voice  is  conducted  with  refer- 
ence to  the  renderincr  of  the  master- 


LITERARY    STUDY.  IO9 

pieces  of  music.  A  boy's  voice  may 
be  trained  for  the  usual  platform 
spouting;  but  such  training  would  not 
serve  for  the  rendering  of  Tennyson's 
'In  Alemoriam, '  for  example,  or  Mil- 
ton's Paradise  Lost. 

The  reading  voice  demands  at  least 
as  much  cultivation  as  the  singing 
voice.  Perhaps,  in  most  cases,  a  five 
years'  judicious  training  of  the  sing- 
ing voice  would  result  in  greater 
excellence  than  a  five  years'  equally 
judicious  training  of  the  reading 
voice.  But  what  a  ridiculous  contrast 
is  presented  by  the  methods  usually 
employed  for  the  training  of  the 
speaking  voice,  and  those  employed 
for  the  training  of  the  singing  voice ! 
Dr.  James  Rush,  in  his  'Philosophy  of 


no  THE    AIMS    OF 

the  Human  Voice,'  after  characteriz- 
ing the  absurdities  of  the  former, 
says:  'Then  visit  a  Conservatorio  of 
Music;  observe  there  the  elementary 
outset,  the  orderly  task,  the  masterly 
discipline,  the  unwearied  superinten- 
dence, and  the  incessant  toil  to  reach 
the  utmost  accomplishment  in  the 
Singing-Voice;  and  afterwards  do  not 
be  surprised  that  the  pulpit,  the 
senate,  the  bar,  and  the  chair  of 
medical  professorship,  are  filled  with 
such  abominable  drawlers,  mouthers, 
mumblers,  clutterers,  squeakers,  chant- 
ers, and  mongers  in  monotony!  nor 
that  the  Schools  of  Singing  are  con- 
stantly sending  abroad  those  great 
instances  of  vocal  wonder,  who  tri- 
umph  along   the    crowded    resorts   of 


LITERARY    STUDY.  Ill 

the  world;  who  contribute  to  the  halls 
of  fashion  and  wealth,  their  most 
refined  source  of  gratification;  who 
sometimes  quell  the  pride  of  rank 
by  a  momentary  sensation  of  envy; 
and  who  draw  forth  the  admiration 
and  receive  the  crowning  applause  of 
the  Prince  and  the  Sage.' 

'If  any  one  would  sing,'  says  Ware 
('Hints  on  extemporaneous  preach- 
ing'), 'he  attends  a  master,  and  is 
drilled  in  the  very  elementary  prin- 
ciples; and  only  after  the  most  labori- 
ous process,  dares  to  exercise  his  voice 
in  public.  ...  If  he  were  learning 
to  play  on  the  flute  for  public  exhibi- 
tion, what  hours  and  days  would  he 
spend,  in  giving  facility  to  his  fingers, 
and  attaining  the  power  of  the  sweetest 


112  THE   AIMS   OF 

and  most  expressive  execution!  If 
he  were  devoting  himself  to  the  organ, 
what  months  and  years  would  he  labor, 
that  he  might  know  its  compass,  and 
be  master  of  its  keys,  and  be  able 
to  draw  out,  at  will,  all  its  various 
combinations  of  harmonious  sound, 
and  its  full  richness  and  delicacy  of 
expression ! 

'And  yet  he  will  fancy  that  the 
grandest,  the  most  various,  and  most 
expressive  ot  all  instruments,  which 
the  Infinite  Creator  has  fashioned  by 
the  union  of  an  intellectual  soul  with 
the  powers  of  speech,  may  be  played 
upon  without  study  or  practice;  he 
comes  to  it  a  mere  uninstructed  tyro, 
and  thinks  to  manage  all  its  stops, 
and  command   the  whole  compass  of 


LITERARY    STUDY.  II3 

its  varied  and  comprehensive  power. 
He  finds  himself  a  bungler  in  the 
attempt,  is  mortified  at  his  failure, 
and  settles  it  in  his  mind  forever  that 
the  attempt  is  vain.' 

In  all  large  bodies  of  students,  there 
are  always  some  who  speak  well,  not 
by  reason  of  what  their  Institutions 
have  done  for  them,  but  in  spite  of 
what  they  have  not  done.  On  impor- 
tant public  occasions,  these  come  to 
the  front  —  on  such  occasions  as  con- 
tests for  prizes  in  oratory.  Commence- 
ment Days,  etc. ;  and  the  Institutions 
with  which  they  are  connected,  virtu- 
ally, if  not  actually,  say.  Behold, 
Ladies  and  Gentlemen,  what  we  have 
done  for  these  dear  young  men !  They 
are   now  ready   to    go    forth   into   the 

H 


114  THE   AIMS    OF 

world,  and  to  express  themselves  be- 
fore public  audiences  with  an  elegant 
effectiveness.  Their  cultivated  vocal 
organs  and  their  graceful  limbs  will 
impart  a  vitality,  a  power,  and  an 
impressiveness,  to  the  social,  political, 
moral  and  religious  principles  with 
which  they  have  been  imbued  within 
our  walls ! 

It  is  thus  that  many  great  institu- 
tions of  learning  practically  impose 
upon  the  public,  lb  avoid  such 
imposition,  their  Presidents  should 
say.  Ladies  and  Gentlemen,  the  stu- 
dents who  will  appear  before  you,  on 
the  present  occasion,  are  the  best 
speakers  we  have  to  show;  and  they 
were  selected,  not  by  reason  of  their 
having  most  profited  by  the  training 


UTER.4RY    STi^DY.  I  I  5 

afforded  by  the  Institution  (for  we 
have  no  training  worth  mentioning  in 
the  science  and  art  of  speaking),  but 
by  reason  of  their  natural  aptitude. 

Some  such  speech  the  Presidents  of 
our  Colleges  and  Universities  ought 
to  make,  in  justice  to  some  of  the 
young  men  who  are  brought  forward 
on  public  occasions.  For  is  it  not 
an  undeniable  fact,  that  the  young 
men  who  acquit  themselves  best  on 
such  occasions,  who  hold  up  what 
little  oratorical  reputation  their  foster- 
ing mothers  enjoy,  owe  those  fostering 
mothers  nothing,  for  any  power  of 
speech  they  may  possess?  In  that 
respect,  those  fostering  mothers  have 
been  to  them  little  better  than  indif- 
ferent, even  unkind,  stepmothers. 


Il6  THE    ALMS   OF 

Where  fostering  mothers  pretend  to 
do  something  for  their  dear  children, 
in  the  way  of  vocal  culture,  they  do 
it  in  such  a  niggardly  way  (by  employ- 
ing, at  small  salaries,  teachers  with  a 
very  slim  outfit  for  their  work,  with 
not  even  refined  voices,  perhaps,  with 
no  affinities  for  the  higher  things  of 
literature,  and  consequently  with  no 
ability  vocally  to  interpret  them),  that 
bad  is  often,  if  not  generally,  made 
worse  —  and  a  worse  which  it  is  after- 
wards hard  to  remedy.  In  the  matter 
of  vocal  tniimng,  /aci'/is  est  descensus, 
\ioyj  facilis  is  shown  by  the  'studied 
improprieties  of  speech '  and  action 
which  are  sure  to  result  when  that 
training  is  unintelligent  and  shallow; 
seii  levocai'e  graJum,  hie  labor^  hoc 
ot-us  est. 


LITERARY    STUDY.  II7 

The  verses,  in  The  Rosciad  of 
Churchill,  875-890,  in  which  the  elo- 
cution of  the  Irish  tragedian,  Henry 
Mossop,  of  the  last  century,  is  char- 
acterized (not  altogether  justly,  how- 
ever, from  the  accounts  we  have  of  his 
acting),  are  quite  applicable  to  the 
elocution  of  many  unfortunate  college 
students  who  have  been  trained  on 
the  economical  plan  above  mentioned 
(see  Note  5)  : 

Mossop,  attached  to  military  plan, 

Still  kept  his  eye  fixed  on  his  right-hand  man ; 

Whilst  the  mouth  measures  words  with  seem- 
ing skill, 

The  right  hand  labours  and  the  left  lies  still. 

For  he  resolved  on  Scripture-grounds  to  go, 

What  the  right  doth,  the  left  hand  shall  not 
know. 

With  studied  impropriety  of  speech 

He  soars  beyond  the  hackney  critic's  reach; 


Il8  THE   AIMS   OF 

To  epithets  allots  emphatic  state, 

Whilst  principals  ungraced,  like  lackeys,  wait, 

In  ways  first  trodden  by  himself  excels, 

And  stands  alone  in  indeclinables; 

Conjunction,  preposition,  adverb,  join 

To  stamp  new  vigour  in  the  nervous  line; 

In  monosyllables  his  thunders  roll. 

He,  she,  it,  and,  we,  ye,  they,  fright  the  soul. 

But  whether  the  teacher  be  master 
or  not,  of  his  subject,  he  is  often 
obliged,  generally  obliged,  to  work 
under  such  unconquerable  disadvan- 
tages, that  no  good  results  can  be 
reasonably  expected.  Students  come 
under  his  instruction  with  the  evil 
results  of  years  of  neglected  speech, 
—  results  which  to  counteract  would 
require  as  many  more  years  of  the 
most  careful  and  judicious  training. 
Furthermore,  they  have  had  no  liter- 


LITERARY    STUDY.  II9 

ary  education,  in  its  true  sense,  i.e., 
spiritual  education,  which  is  not  got 
in  the  schools;  and  without  such  edu- 
cation reading,  which,  to  be  worthy 
of  the  name,  should  exhibit  the  co- 
operation in  literature  of  the  spiritual 
and  the  intellectual,  is  quite  impos- 
sible. One  might  exhibit,  in  his 
reading,  the  intellectual  articulation 
or  framework  of  a  poem,  or  any  other 
product  of  the  higher  literature,  but 
he  would  not  by  merely  so  doing, 
realize  the  true  object  of  reading. 
The  intellectual  coefficient  can  be 
apprehended  through  silent  reading; 
the  main  object  of  vocalization  is  to 
exhibit  the  spiritual  coefficient,  which 
is  indefinite  to  the  intellect,  and  needs 
to  be  vocally  rendered  as  much  as  a 


I20  THE    AIMS    OF 

musical  composition  needs  to  be 
vocally  or  instrumentally  rendered. 

Taken  as  it  stands  in  the  King 
James's  version,  whatever  the  real 
meaning  may  be,  in  the  Hebrew, 
a  comprehensive  characterization  of 
good  reading  is  found  in  the  8th 
chapter  and  8th  verse  of  the  Book  of 
Nehemiah:  'So  they  read  in  the  book 
in  the  law  of  God  distinctly,  and  gave 
the  sense,  and  caused  them  to  under- 
stand the  reading.' 

To  read  distinctly,  to  give  the 
sense,  to  cause  to  understand  (in  the 
Scripture  sense),  meet  all  the  condi- 
tions of  effective  reading. 

I .  To  read  distinctly.  '  Words, '  says 
the  Rev.  Gilbert  Austin,  in  his  Xhiro- 
nomia,'  'are  to  be  delivered  from  the 


LITERARY    STUDY.  121 

lips  as  beautiful  coins  newly  issued 
from  the  mint,  deeply  and  accurately 
impressed,  perfectly  finished,  neatly 
struck  by  the  proper  organs,  distinct, 
in  due  succession,  and  of  due  weight.' 
(See  Note  6.) 

If  one  whose  words  are  more  or  less 
inhuman,  were  trained  to  such  an  enun- 
ciation as  is  described  in  this  passage, 
he  would  be  even  morally  elevated. 
His  enunciation  would  strike  in. 

2.    To  give  the  sense. 

I  have  defined  literature  as  the 
expression,  in  letters,  of  the  spiritual, 
cooperating  with  the  intellectual, 
man,  the  former  being  the  primary, 
dominant  coefficient.  A  production 
of  the  pure  intellect  does  not  belong 
to  the  domain  of  literature  proper. 


122  THE    AIMS    OF 

By  'giving  the  sense,'  in  reading, 
is  generally  meant,  the  vocal  render- 
ing of  the  thought-element,  which 
rendering,  to  be  distinct  and  effective, 
demands,  in  the  first  place,  a  perfect 
articulation;  in  the  second  place,  that 
all  the  successive  and  involved  groups 
of  thought  be  presented  with  a  dis- 
tinctness of  outline,  none  of  them 
being  jumbled  together;  in  the  third 
place,  that  the  relative  value  of  these 
groups  of  thought  be  exhibited  by 
bringing  some  into  the  foreground, 
by  a  fulness  of  expression,  and  throw- 
ing others  back,  by  employing  a 
greater  or  less  degree,  as  may  be  re- 
quired, of  abatement  of  voice  (reduc- 
tion of  pitch  and  force),  of  monotony, 
acceleration  of  voice,  and  other  means; 


LITERARY    STUDY.  I  23 

and  in  the  fourth  place  (not  to  enum- 
erate other  means  of  'giving  the 
sense  '),  by  what  I  will  call  the  slight- 
ing of  certain  parts  of  discourse, 
uttering  them  as  if  they  said  them- 
selves, the  mind  not  coming  down 
upon  them.  The  voice  should  be 
trained  especially  upon  what  may  be 
called  background.  Emphasis  is  re- 
garded by  many  readers  as  the  all- 
important  thing;  but  it  is  really  the 
least  important.  (See  Note  7.)  Any 
untrained  voice  can  emphasize.  The 
difficult  thing  to  do  well  is  the  oppo- 
site of  emphasis  —  the  slighting  of 
certain  subordinate  parts  of  discourse. 
Whatever  is  sufficiently  implied,  or 
should  be  taken  for  granted,  or  has 
been    anticipated,    and,    in    short,    all 


124  THE    AIMS    OF 

the  outstanding  relations  of  the  main 
movement  of  thought  and  feeling, 
require  to  be  slighted  in  expression, 
in  order  that  they  may  not  unduly 
reduce  the  prominence  and  distinct- 
ness of  the  main  movement.  Only 
the  well-trained  voice  can  manage 
properly  the  background  of  what  is 
presented;  and  if  the  background  is 
properly  managed,  the  foreground  will 
generally  have  the  requisite  distinct- 
ness. When  a  reader  endeavors  to 
make  everything  tell,  he  makes  noth- 
ing tell.  Ambitious  reading  often 
defeats  its  own  end. 

The  same  principle  which  Herbert 
Spencer  sets  forth,  in  his  admirable 
article  on  the  Philosophy  of  Style, 
as  underlying  the  current  maxims  of 


LITERARY    STUDY.  I  25 

rhetoric,  namely,  economy  of  the  re- 
cipient's attention,  must  be  obserYed  in 
vocal  delivery.  The  reader  who  keeps 
his  hearers  constantly  on  the  qui  vive, 
by  bringing  everything  to  the  front, 
soon  exhausts  their  minds;  while  the 
reader  who  so  manages  the  back- 
ground of  what  he  is  presenting  that 
there  is,  on  the  part  of  his  hearers,  an 
alternation  of  tension  and  relaxation 
of  mind  (both  being  quite  sponta- 
neous and  unconscious),  may  read 
twice  or  three  times  as  long  as  the 
other,  and  exhaust  the  minds  of  his 
hearers  less.  And  their  impressions, 
too,  from  what  they  have  heard,  will 
be  much  more  distinct,  and,  if  the 
relative  values  of  successive  and  in- 
volved groups  of  thought,  and  sections 


126  THE    AIMS    OF 

of  thought,  are  nicely  exhibited,  much 
more  cor7-ect^'\\\  be  their  impressions. 

A  lightsoiiieness  of  vocal  movement 
ove?'  the  subordinate  parts  of  discourse, 
such  as  induces  a  spontaneous  and 
unconscious  reduction  of  attention  on 
the  pa?-t  of  the  hearers,  is  one  of  the 
most  important  things  to  cultivate  in 
elocution. 

When  the  'sense,'  and  only  that  has 
been  distinctly  presented,  the  more 
important  part  of  interpretative  read- 
ing has  yet  to  be  achieved.  In  ren- 
dering spiritualized  thought,  thought 
interfused  with  feeling,  the  reader 
must, 

3.  Cause  to  understand.  The  Scrip- 
tural use  of  'understand'  has  refer- 
ence, not  to  the  discursive  intellect,  but 


LliERARV    SrUDV.  I27 

to  the  understanding  heart  ('the  great 
intuitive^  or  non-discursive  organ')  — 
to  a  sympathetic  appropriation  and 
assimilation  of  divine  truth.  So  the 
meaning  of  'cause  to  understand,'  is, 
that  the  reader  must,  by  his  intonation 
(the  choral  atmosphere  of  speech),  by 
the  vocal  coloring,  so  to  speak,  which 
he  gives  to  spiritualized  thought,  in- 
duce, in  his  hearers,  a  sympathetic 
response  to  the  spiritual  element. 
This  is,  in  fact,  the  all-important 
thing  to  be  done,  in  interpretative 
reading.  Thought  which  is  presented 
in  a  white  light,  does  not  necessarily 
demand  a  vocal  rendering.  A  prop- 
osition of  Euclid  cannot  be  enforced 
by  the  voice,  as  there  is  nothing  to  be 
enforced.     It  is  independent,  too,  of 


128  THE    AIMS    OF 

form.  It  might  be  expressed  in  bar- 
barous Latin,  which  the  student  might 
have  to  interpret  with  the  aid  of  gram- 
mar and  dictionary,  and  the  meaning 
would  be  the  same  as  it  would  be  if 
expressed  in  the  most  perfect  Greek. 
But  spiritualized  thought  demands 
organic  form,  and  can  be  enforced 
and  rendered  more  apprehensible 
through  a  sympathetic  intonation  of 
the  voice  of  a  reader  who  has  ade- 
quately assimilated  it.  The  voice 
serves  as  a  chorus  to  call  forth,  to 
guide,  and  to  interpret,  the  sympa- 
thies of  the  hearer. 

To  read  distinctly,  to  give  the 
sense,  to  cause  to  understand,  bring 
into  play  the  three  persons  of  the 
trinal  unity  presented   in   Browning's 


LITERARY    STUDY.  I  29 

*  Death  in  the  Desert;  '  to  read  dis- 
tinctly belongs  to  the  'what  Does;  '  to 
give  the  sense  belongs  to  the  'what 
Knows;  '  to  cause  to  understand  (as 
I  have  explained  it)  belongs  to  the 
'what  Is; '  and  it  is  the  latter,  alone, 
in  the  reader,  w4iich  can  effectively 
reach  the  'what  Is'   in  the  hearer. 

Take,  for  exam])le,  the  two  follow- 
ing stanzas  from  Tennyson's  'Palace 
of  Art:  ' 

But  in  dark  corners  of  her  palace  stood 
Uncertain  shapes;   and  unawares 

On  white-eyed   phantasms   weeping   tears   of 
blood, 
And  horrible  nightmares, 

And  hollow  shades  enclosing  hearts  of  flame 
And,  with  dim  fretted  foreheads  all. 

On  corpses  three-months-old,  at  noon  she  came, 
That  stood  against  the  wall. 

I 


T30  THE    AIMS    OF 

In  order  distinctly  'to  give  the 
sense,'  the  construction  of  the  lan- 
guage is  such  as  to  require  the  employ- 
ment of  all  modes  of  grouping  (that 
is,  uniting  the  syntactically  connected, 
but  far  separated,  ideas,  and  keeping 
apart  those  which  are  not  so  con- 
nected.    fSee  Note  8.) 

The  adverb  'unawares'  in  the  first 
of  these  stanzas,  qualifies  'came,'  in 
the  second,  they  being  separated  to 
the  extent  of  five  verses;  'came  '  is  the 
antecedent  of  the  preposition  'on,' 
immediately  following  'unawares.' 
The  relative  clause,  'That  stood  against 
the  wall,'  is  separated  from  its  ante- 
cedent 'corpses,'  by  the  predication, 
'at  noon  she  came.' 

The  dire  confusion  which  has  come 


LITERARY    STUDY.  I3I 

upon  the  beauty-loving  soul,  seems  to 
be  symbolized  in  the  very  syntax  of 
these  stanzas. 

In  order  to  address  distinctly  to  the 
ear,  the  connection  of  'unawares '  with 
'at  noon  she  came,'  abatement,  that 
is,  a  reduction  of  pitch,  force,  and 
expression,  must  be  employed  upon 
what  intervenes,  and  also  an  acceler- 
ated utterance  (the  object  of  the  latter 
being  to  connect  the  related  ideas, 
'unawares'  and  'at  noon  she  came,' 
as  soon  as  possible.  To  make  the 
words  stand  out  well,  the  voice  must 
be  carried  through  a  wider  interval 
upon  'unawares,'  by  reason  of  its 
remoteness  from  'at  noon  she  came,' 
than  would  otherwise  be  necessary; 
and    'at    noon    she    came '    must    be 


132  THE   AIMS    OF 

uttered  with  an  extra  force  (Dr.  Rush's 
'emphatic  tie  '),  to  mark  distinctly  to 
the  ear  its  connection  with  'unawares.' 
In  the  abated  portion,  the  phrase, 
'with  dim  fretted  foreheads  all,'  must 
receive,  for  nice  grouping,  a  second 
degree  of  abatement.  After  bringing 
out  strongly  *at  noon  she  came,'  the 
voice  should  drift  down,  in  a  slighting 
way,  upon  'That  stood  against  the 
wall.' 

Now  the  object  of  this  grouping, 
which  the  reader,  skilled  in  vocally 
presenting  the  anatomy  of  speech, 
would  do  quite  spontaneously,  is, 
simply  'to  give  the  sense; '  but  the 
more  important  part  of  reading 
remains  to  be  done,  namely,  'to  cause 
to  understand,'    that   is,   as  has  been 


LITERARY    STUDY.  1 33 

explained,  by  intonation  (which  I  have 
called  the  choral  atmosphere  of  read- 
ing), by  vocal  coloring,  to  induce  a 
sympathetic  response  (see  Note  9) 
to  the  dire  and  awful  'confusion,' 
described  in  previous  stanzas,  which 
has  been  wrought  in  the  beauty-loving 
soul  who  has  shut  out  Love,  and  has 
been  in  turn  shut  out  from  Love,  the 
kingdom  of  whose  thought  has  been 
divided,  and  upon  whom  'deep  dread 
and  loathing  of  her  solitude '  has 
fallen. 

I  have  often  thought,  when  reading 
that  dramatic  description  of  Christ  in 
the  synagogue,  in  the  4th  chapter  of 
Luke,  that  the  impression  he  made 
on  the  congregation,  was  largely,  if 
not  altogether,  due  to  his  vocal  ren- 


134  THE    AIMS    OF 

dering  of  the  passage  he  read  from 
the  book  of  the  prophet  Esaias  (the 
passage  itself  must  have  been  familiar 
to  them  all) : 

'And  he  came  to  Nazareth,  where 
he  had  been  brought  up:  and,  as  his 
custom  was,  he  went  into  the  syna- 
gogue on  the  sabbath  day,  and  stood 
up  for  to  read.  And  there  was  deliv- 
ered unto  him  the  book  of  the  prophet 
Esaias.  And  when  he  had  opened 
the  book,  he  found  the  place  where  it 
was  written,  The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is 
upon  me,  because  he  hath  anointed 
me  to  preach  the  gospel  to  the  poor; 
he  hath  sent  me  to  heal  the  broken- 
hearted, to  preach  deliverance  to  the 
captives,  and  recovering  of  sight  to 
the  blind,  to  set  at  liberty  them  that 


LITERARY    STUDY.  1 35 

are  bruised,  to  preach  the  acceptable 
year  of  the  Lord.  And  he  closed  the 
book,  and  he  gave  it  again  to  the 
minister,  and  sat  down.  And  the  eyes 
of  all  them  that  were  in  the  synagogue 
were  fastened  on  him.' 

It  may  have  been  that  he  read  more 
of  what  is  now  the  6ist  chapter  of  the 
prophet  Isaiah,  than  is  recorded.  It 
is  a  beautiful  chapter  in  our  English 
version;  it  may  have  been  more  beau- 
tiful in  the  Hebrew,  and  Christ  may 
have  read  it  in  a  half  chant,  as  was 
probably  the  custom,  in  which  an 
indefinite  spiritual  intonation  rose 
above  the  definite  thought,  and  mys- 
teriously touched  the  souls  of  those 
who  heard  it;  reached  the  innermost 
recesses  of  the  spirit. 


136  THE   ALMS    OF 

When  it  is  said  that  'the  eyes  of  all 
them  that  were  in  the  synagogue  were 
fastened  on  him,'  it  does  not  appear 
that  he  had  yet  spoken  in  his  own 
person.  And  some  of  them  did  not 
know  who  he  was.  It  was  evidently 
the  effect  which  his  reading  had  upon 
them  which  caused  all  eyes  to  be 
fastened  on  him.  I  fancy  that  an 
impressive  intonation  came  from  the 
reader's  own  being  —  from  the  spirit- 
ual consciousness  he  had  of  the  deep 
below  deep  in  the  meaning  of  what 
he  read.  That  he  took  what  he  read, 
as  pertaining  to  himself,  his  own 
explicit  statement  is  recorded:  'And 
he  began  to  say  unto  them,  This  day 
is  this  scripture  fulfilled  in  your 
ears.' 


LITERARY    STUDY.  I  37 

I  will  here  repeat  what  I  wrote  and 
published  more  than  thirty  years  ago: 

Let  the  earnest  student,  who  knows 
that  good  things  are  difficult,  and  who 
strives  and  labors  to  realize  a  lofty 
standard  of  vocal  excellence,  if  he 
find  not  the  living  teacher  who  is  able 
to  meet  his  wants,  devote  himself  to 
a  reverential  study  of  'The  Philosophy 
of  the  Human  Voice,'  by  Dr.  James 
Rush.  The  analysis  exhibited  in  this 
profound  work,  will  satisfy  much  of 
the  cilft-iosity  of  him  who  desires  to 
read  the  history  of  his  voice;  'for,' 
to  adopt  the  words  of  the  learned 
author,  in  the  introduction  to  the  first 
edition  (1827),  'I  feel  assured,  by  the 
result  of  the  rigid  method  of  observa- 
tion employed  throughout  the  inquiry, 


ZT^8  THE    AIMS    OF 

that  if  science  should  ever  come  to 
one  consent  on  this  point,  it  will  not 
differ  essentially  from  this  record. 
The  world  has  long  asked  for  light 
on  this  subject.  It  may  not  choose 
to  accept  it  now;  but  having  idly 
suffered  its  own  opportunity  for  dis- 
covery to  go  by,  it  must,  under  any 
capricious  postponement,  at  last  re- 
ceive it  here.  .  .  .  Truth,  whose  first 
steps  should  be  always  vigorous  and 
alone,  is  often  obliged  to  lean  for 
support  and  progress  on  the  arm  of 
Time;  who  then  only,  when  support- 
ing her,  seems  to  have  laid  aside  his 
wings. ' 

Dr.  Rush,  it  appears,  was  led  to  the 
study  which  resulted  in  this  great  pro- 
duct of  vocal  science,  by  his  hearing, 


LITERARY    STUDY.  I  39 

when  a  young  man,  the  tragic  actress, 
Mrs.  Siddons,  in  her  Shakespearian 
roles,  to  whose  voice  he  never  refers 
without  the  expression  of  an  enthusi- 
astic admiration. 

In  the  section  of  his  work,  'Of  the 
Median  Stress,'  'the  aim  and  power 
of  which,'  he  says,  *"in  the  very  tor- 
rent of  expression,"  is  to  "beget  a 
temperance  which  may  give  it  smooth- 
ness," '  he  pays  the  following  tribute 
to  the  Great  Actress,  one  marked 
characteristic  of  whose  wonderful  voice 
was  'the  median  stress,'  'the  graceful 
vanish  of  her  concrete :  ' 

'If  she  could  now  be  heard,  I  would 
point  in  illustration  to  Britain's  great 
Mistress  of  the  voice.  Since  that 
cannot   be,   let   those   who    have    not 


140  THE    AIMS    OF 

forgotten  the  stately  dignity  of  Mrs. 
Siddons,  bear  witness  to  the  effect  of 
the  graceful  vanish  of  her  concrete, 
and  of  that  swelling  energy  by  which 
she  richly  enforced  the  expression  of 
joy,  and  surprise,  and  indignation. 
But  why  should  I  be  so  sparing  in 
praise,  as  to  select  her  eminent  ex- 
emplification of  the  single  subject 
before  us;  when  it  seems  to  my  recol- 
lection that  a  whole  volume  of  elocu- 
tion might  be  taught  by  her  instances. 
*It  is  apparently  a  partial  rule  of 
criticism,  but  when  drawn  from  deli- 
cate perceptions,  made  wise  by  culti- 
vation, it  is  the  best,  —  to  measure  the 
merit  of  Actors,  by  their  ability  to 
give  with  audible  conformity,  that 
same  expression    of    the    poet,  which 


LITERARY    STUDY.  I4I 

the  soul  of  the  hearer  is  whispering 
to  itself.  Such  is  the  rule,  which,  in 
my  early  days  of  ignorance,  but  not 
of  insensibility,  set  up  this  great 
Woman's  voice  as  the  mirror  of  poetic 
feeling;  in  which  one  might  recognize 
himself,  and  love  the  equal  picture  as 
his  own.  All  that  is  smooth  and  flex- 
ible, and  various  in  intonation;  all 
that  is  impressive  in  force,  and  in 
long-drawn  time;  all  that  is  apt  upon 
the  countenance,  and  consonant  in 
gesture,  gave  their  united  energy,  and 
gracefulness  of  grandeur,  to  this  one 
great  model  of  Ideal  Elocution.  Hers 
was  that  height  of  excellence  which, 
defying  mimicry,  can  be  made  imag- 
inable only  by  being  equalled. 

'Such  was  my  enthusiastic  opinion, 


142  THE    AIMS    OF 

before  a  scrutiny  into  speech  had 
developed  a  boundless  scheme  of  criti- 
cism; which  while  it  admits  that 
nature  may  hold  the  unrevealed  power 
of  producing  occasional  instances  of 
rare  accomplishment  of  voice;  yet 
assures  us  that  nothing  but  the  influ- 
ence of  some  system  of  principles, 
arising  out  of  well  observed  instinct, 
can  ever  produce  multiplied  examples 
of  excellence,  or  give  to  any  one  the 
perfection  of  art.  There  is  a  power 
in  science  which  searches,  discovers, 
amplifies,  and  completes;  and  which 
all  the  strength  of  spontaneous  effort 
can  never  reach.  I  do  not  wish  to 
be  asked,  how  this  "  most  noble  mother 
of  the  world  "  (see  Note  lo),  with  only 
those   unwritten  rules  of  genius,  that 


LITERARY    STUDY.  1 43 

Still  allowed  her  to  incur  the  dangers 
of  the  scanty  doctrines  of  her  art, — 
would  be  accounted  by  the  side  of 
another  Siddons  making  her  selections 
of  sentiment  and  taste,  from  the 
familiar  rudiments  and  measurable 
functions  of  the  voice;  and  able  by 
the  authority  of  an  indulgent  disci- 
pline to  be  a  rational  critic  o\er 
herself.  With  a  full  reliance  on  the 
surpassing  efficacy  of  scientific  prin- 
ciples, still  in  the  contentment  of 
recollection,  I  would  not  wish  to 
answer  this  question. 

'The  vision  of  the  Great  Actress  is 
before  me !  If  I  am  beset  by  an 
illusion,  which  another  hearing  might 
dispel,  I  rejoice  to  think  I  can  never 
hear  her  again.' 


144  THE    AIMS    OF 


Note  i,  Page  31. 

•  If  it  be  said  that  Shakespeare  wrote  per- 
fect historical  plays  on  subjects  belonging  to 
the  preceding  centuries,  I  answer,  that  they 
are  perfect  plays  just  because  there  is  no  care 
about  centuries  in  them,  but  a  life  which  all 
men  recognize  for  the  human  life  of  all  time  ; 
and  this  it  is,  not  because  Shakespeare  sought 
to  give  universal  truth,  but  because,  painting 
honestly  and  completely  from  the  men  about 
him,  he  painted  that  human  nature  which  is, 
indeed,  constant  enough,  —  a  rogue  in  the  fif- 
teenth century  being,  at  heart,  what  a  rogue 
is  in  the  nineteenth  and  was  in  the  twelfth; 
and  an  honest  or  a  knightly  man  being,  in  like 
manner,  very  similar  to  other  such  at  any  other 
time.  And  the  work  of  these  great  idealists 
is,  therefore,  always  universal;  not  because  it 
is  not  portrait,  but  because  it  is  complete  por- 
trait down  to  the  heart,  which  is  the  same  in 
all  ages :   and  the  work  of  the  mean  idealists 


LITERARY    STUDY.  1 45 

is  not  universal,  not  because  it  is  portrait,  but 
because  it  is  //a^portrait,  —  of  the  outside,  tlie 
manners  and  the  dress,  not  of  the  heart.  Thus 
Tintoret  and  Shakespeare  paint,  both  of  them, 
simply  Venetian  and  English  nature  as  they 
saw  it  in  their  time,  down  to  the  root;  and  it 
does  for  all  time  ;  but  as  for  any  care  to  cast 
themselves  into  the  particular  ways  and  tones 
of  thought,  or  custom,  of  past  time  in  their 
historical  work,  you  will  find  it  in  neither  of 
them,  nor  in  any  other  perfectly  great  man 
that  I  know  of.'  —  Ricskin's  ^Modern  Painlers.'' 

Note  2,  Page  31. 

J.  R.  Green's  *  Short  History  of  the  English 
People '  would  be  preferable  to  any  direct 
History  of  the  Literature  which  attempts  to 
philosophize  about  its  relationships.  'It  is  a 
history,'  says  the  author,  in  his  Preface,  '  not 
of  English  Kings  or  English  Conquests,  but  of 
the  English  People.  At  the  risk  of  sacrificing 
much  that  was  interesting  and  attractive  in 
itself,  and  which  the  constant  usage  of  our 
historians  has  made  familiar  to  English  readers, 

K 


146  THE    ALMS    OF 

I  have  preferred  to  pass  lightly  and  briefly 
over  the  details  of  foreign  wars  and  diploma- 
cies, the  personal  adventures  of  kings  and 
nobles,  the  pomp  of  courts,  or  the  intrigues  of 
favorites,  and  to  dwell  at  length  on  the  inci- 
dents of  that  constitutional,  intellectual,  and 
social  advance  in  which  we  read  the  history 
of  the  nation  itself.  It  is  with  this  purpose 
that  I  have  devoted  more  space  to  Chaucer 
than  to  Cressy,  to  Caxton  than  to  the  petty 
strife  of  Yorkist  and  Lancaster,  to  the  Poor 
Law  of  Elizabeth  than  to  her  victory  at  Cadiz ; 
to  the  Methodist  revival  than  to  the  escape  of 
the  Young  Pretender. 

* .  .  .  If  I  have  said  little  of  the  glories 
of  Cressy,  it  is  because  I  have  dwelt  much  on 
the  wrong  and  misery  which  prompted  the 
verse  of  Longland  and  the  preaching  of  Ball. 
But  on  the  other  hand,  I  have  never  shrunk 
from  telling  at  length  the  triumphs  of  peace. 
I  have  restored  to  their  place  among  the 
achievements  of  Englishmen  the  "  Faerie 
Queene"  and  the  "  Novum  Organum."  I  have 
set    Shakespeare    among    the    heroes    of    the 


LITERARY    STUDY.  I47 

Elizabethan  age,  and  placed  the  scientific 
inquiries  of  the  Royal  Society  side  by  side 
with  the  victories  of  the  New  Model.  If  some 
of  the  conventional  figures  of  military  and 
political  history  occupy  in  my  pages  less  than 
the  space  usually  given  them,  it  is  because  I 
have  had  to  find  a  place  for  figures  little 
heeded  in  common  history  —  the  figures  of 
the  missionary,  the  poet,  the  printer,  the  mer- 
chant, and  the  philosopher.' 

Note  3,  Page  90. 

It  should  be  noticed  that  the  third  ictus  of 
the  verse  is  wanting : 
And  fdlls  I  on  the  6th  |  er  .  .  .  j  How  n6w]  what 

n6ws  ? 

It  would  be  a  defect  if  the  third  ictus  fell 
upon  the  first  word  addressed  to  Lady  Mac- 
beth. 

A  note  in  a  French  edition  of  the  tragedy 
says:  ^ falls  on  the  other  {side)  signifie  :  elle 
tombe  tout  entiere  de  I'autre  cote,  au  lieu  de 
retomber  en  selle.  Peut-etre  faut-il  retablir  le 
mot  sous-entendu  side,  ce  qui  retablit  aussi 
le  vers.' 


148  THE    AIMS    OF 

Note  4,  Page  105. 

'  Quand  on  voit  le  style  nature!/  says  Pas- 
cal, in  his  Pensi'es,  '  on  est  tout  etonne  et 
ravi :  car  on  s'attendait  de  voir  un  auteur,  et 
on  trouve  un  homme.  Au  lieu  que  ceux  qui 
ont  le  gout  bon,  et  qui  en  voyant  un  livre 
croient  trouver  un  homme,  sent  tout  surpris 
de  trouver  un  auteur.' 

Note  5,  Page  117. 

*  His  syllables  fell  from  him  like  minute- 
guns,  even  in  or-din-a-ry  con-ver-sa-tion,  and 
the  nickname  of  the  "  teapot  actor,"  referred 
to  his  favorite  attitude  with  one  arm  on  his 
hip  and  the  other  extended.'  —  Dr.  Doran''s 
*  Annals  of  the  English  Slage.^ 

Note  6,  Page  121. 

'  Dilucida  vero  erit  pronunciatio,  primum, 
si  verba  tota  exegerit,  quorum  pars  devorari, 
pars  destitui  solet,  plerisque  extremas  syllabas 
non  preferentibus,  dum  priorum  sono  indul- 
gent.' —  Quintilian,  lib.  xi.  c.  3. 


LITERARY    STUDY.  1 49 

Note  7,  Page  123. 

In  the  section  of  his  work,  '■Of  the  Faults  of 
Readers^''  Dr.  Rush  remarks:  'It  is  not  my 
intention  to  go  into  a  notice  of  the  faults  of 
emphasis,  in  the  common  acceptation  of  the 
term.  They  all  resolve  into  a  want  of  true 
apprehension  on  the  part  of  the  reader.  It 
should,  however,  be  remarked,  that  through 
ignorance  of  other  constituents  of  an  enlarged 
and  definite  elocution,  which  our  present  in- 
quiry has  taught  us  to  appreciate  and  to  apply, 
this  well-known  subject  of  stress-laying  empha- 
sis, has,  in  the  art  of  reading,  held  an  importance 
which,  within  the  narrow  school  of  imitation, 
has  restrictively  assumed  the  very  name  of  the 
art  itself.  "  How  admirably  she  reads,^'  said  a 
thoughtless  critic,  of  an  actress,  who,  with  per- 
haps a  proper  emphasis  of  Force,  was,  never- 
theless, deforming  her  part,  by  every  fault  of 
Time  and  Intonation.  The  critic  was  one  of 
those  who  have  neither  knowledge  nor  docil- 
ity, and  therefore  deserved  neither  argument 
nor   correction.      Emphasis  being  almost  the 


150  THE    AIMS    OF 

only  branch  of  the  art  in  which  there  is  any- 
thing like  an  approach  towards  a  rule  of  in- 
struction, this  single  function,  by  a  figure  of 
speech  grounded  on  its  importance,  is  taken, 
in  the  limited  nomenclature  of  criticism,  for 
the  sum  of  the  art.  Even  Mr.  Kemble,  whose 
eulogy  might  have  been  founded  upon  other 
merits,  made  the  first  stir  of  his  fame,  if  we 
have  not  been  misinformed,  by  a  new  "  read- 
ing," that  is,  by  a  new  application  of  stress,  to 
some  of  the  words  in  Hamlet. 

'  We  have  awarded  to  the  emphasis  of  stress 
its  due,  but  not  its  undue  degree  of  conse- 
quence ;  and  perhaps  it  may  be  hereafter 
admitted  that  much  of  the  contention  about 
certain  unimportant  points  of  this  stress-laying 
emphasis,  and  of  pause,  has  arisen  from  critics 
on  the  drama  finding  very  little  else  of  the 
vast  compass  of  speech,  on  which  they  were 
able  to  form  for  themselves  a  discriminative 
opinion,  or  on  which  they  were  willing  to 
expose  their  ignorance  to  others.  When 
under  a  scientific  institute  of  elocution,  we 
shall   have   more   important   matters  to   study 


LITERARY    STUDY.  151 

and  delight  in,  we  may  perhaps  find  that  much 
of  this  trifling  lore  of  italic  notation,  which 
now  serves  to  keep  up  contention  in  a  daily 
gazette,  will  be  quite  overlooked,  in  the  high 
court  of  philosophic  criticism.' 

Note  8,  Page  130. 

'  The  inversions  of  style,  the  intersections 
of  expletives,  and  the  wide  separation  of  ante- 
cedents and  relatives,  which  are  allowed  in 
poetry,  may  be  made  sufficiently  perspicuous, 
through  the  circumspection  of  the  mind,  and 
the  advancing  span  of  the  eye,  in  the  delib- 
erate perusal  of  a  sentence.  But  in  listening 
to  the  speech  or  the  reading  of  others,  we  can 
employ  no  scrutinizing  hesitation;  and  though 
the  memory  may  retrace,  to  a  certain  limit, 
the  intricacies  of  construction,  the  best  dis- 
cernment cannot  always  anticipate  the  sense 
of  a  succeeding  member,  nor  the  nature  and 
position  of  its  pause.  The  higher  poetry,  in 
the  contriving  spirit  of  its  eloquence,  gives 
many  instances  of  extreme  involution  of  style. 
A  reader,   therefore,   is  frequently  obliged  to 


152  THE    ALMS    OF 

employ  other  means,  for  exhibiting  the  true 
relationship  of  words,  besides  that  simple  cur- 
rent of  utterance,  which  may  be  sufficient  for 
the  clear  syntax  of  a  more  natural  idiom.'  — 
Dr.  Rush's  ^Philosophy  of  the  Human  Voice.'' 

Note  9,  Page  133. 

I  mean  of  course,  sympathetic  in  an  art 
sense,  a  sympathetic  response  being  a  repro- 
duction, within  one's  self,  of  feelings  described, 
or  exhibited,  in  a  work  of  poetic  or  dramatic 
art.  De  Quincey,  in  a  note  on  his  use  of  the 
word,  '  sympathy,'  in  his  essay  '  On  the  knock- 
ing at  the  gate,  in  Macbeth,'  says  :  '  It  seems 
almost  ludicrous  to  guard  and  explain  my 
use  of  a  word  in  a  situation  where  it  would 
naturally  explain  itself.  But  it  has  become 
necessary  to  do  so,  in  consequence  of  the 
unscholarlike  use  of  the  word  sympathy,  at 
present  so  general,  by  which,  instead  of  taking 
it  in  its  proper  sense,  as  the  act  of  reproducing 
in  our  minds  the  feelings  of  another,  whether 
for  hatred,  indignation,  love,  pity,  or  approba- 
tion, it  is  made  a  mere  synonyme  of  the  word 


LITERARY    STUDY.  I  53 

pity  ;  and  hence,  instead  of  saying,  "  sympathy 
with  another,"  many  writers  adopt  the  mon- 
strous barbarism  of  "sympathyy2?r  another."  ' 

Note  10,  Page  142, 

'  I  refer  here  to  the  salutation  of  Corio- 
lanus  to  Volumnia  :  for  it  is  in  this  character 
Mrs.  Siddons  always  comes  upon  my  memory; 
embodying  the  pathos,  the  matron  dignity, 
and  the  indignation,  together  with  the  other 
moral  solemnities  of  the  scene  of  intercession 
in  the  Volcian  camp.'  —  Dr.  RusJi's  N'ote. 


SHAKESPEARE'S 

ENGLAND. 

i8mo.  Cloth,  75  Cents. 


"...  It  was  the  author's  wish,  in  dwelling  thus 
upon  the  rural  loveliness  and  the  literary  and  historical 
associations  of  that  delightful  realm,  to  afford  sympa- 
thetic guidance  and  useful  suggestion  to  other  Ameri- 
can travellers  who,  like  himself,  might  be  attracted  to 
roam  among  the  shrines  of  the  mother-land.  Tempera- 
ment is  the  explanation  of  style;  and  he  has  written 
thus  of  England  because  she  has  filled  his  mind  with 
beauty  and  his  heart  with  mingled  joy  and  sadness; 
and  surely  some  memory  of  her  venerable  ruins,  her 
ancient  shrines,  her  rustic  glens,  her  gleaming  rivers, 
and  her  flower-spangled  meadows  will  mingle  with  the 
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